Life of Martin Luther

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THE LIBRARY
OF

THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA

BEQUEST OF

Alice R. Hilgard

LIFE OF MARTIN LUTHER

BY

CHEVALIER BUNSEN

WITH AN ESTIMATE OF LUTHER'S
CHARACTER AND GENIUS

By THOMAS CARLYLE

AND

AN APPENDIX
By SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

GIFT

PREFACE

The briefest, most reliable, and, taken
til in all, the completest extant life of Lu-
ther, is this contributed by the Chevaher
Bunsen to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Author and subject need no praise from
us. We are happy to place within the
reach of all a good and trustworthy sum-
mary of the great Reformer's life.

From Carlyle is added an estimate of
Luther's Character and Genius — one of
those spiritual portraits for which Carlyle
will be known as long as literature en.
dures, and on which his feme will ulti-
mately rest.

Following our general plan, we here
give a biographical sketch of the author
from whom the Life of Luther has bees
taken.

M878971

iv Pr efa c c .

Bunsen, Christian Karl Josias, Che.
valier De, a philologist, theologian and
diplomatist, was born at Corbach, in the
small German principality of Waldeck, on
the 25th of August, 1791 ; and was educated
at the University of Gbttingen, where he
studied philology under the famous Heyne.
He distinguished himself greatly as a clas-
sical scholar, and in 1813 published at
Gbttingen a prose essay, " De Jure Athe-
niensium Hereditario." After being em-
ployed some time as a classical teacher,
his desire to perfect himself in Oriental
languages induced him to go to Paris,
where he studied under the noted Orien-
talist Sylvestre de Sacy. He had it next
in contemplation to go to India, in com-
pany with an Englishman, in order to ac-
quire a further knowledge of Sanscrit; but
having in the mean time determined to
visit Italy, he met at Rome his friend
Brandis, then Secretary to the Prussian
embassy at Rome under Niebuhr. Intro-
duced to Niebuhr, the young scholar

Preface

fbund in him a friend capable of appreci-
ating his merits. Abandoning his inten-
tion of going to the East, he settled in
Rome as Niebuhr's private secretary — a
situation afterwards exchanged for the
higher one of secretary to the embassy.
Enjoying the benefit of Niebuhr's society
and advice, he resumed his classical stu-
dies with enthusiasm, turning to advantage
the facilities afforded him by his residence
in Rome. The results of his inquiries into
the antiquities and topography of Rome
appeared in his " Beschreibung der Stadt
Rom," (Description of the City of Rome.)
He also interested himself much at this
time in the hieroglyphical researches of
Champollion ; and he was instrumental in
inciting the savans of Berlin to betake
themselves to this branch of archaeology,
and more particularly in determining to-
wards it the rising talent of the great liv-
ing ^Egyptologist, Dr. Lepsius. At Rome
Bunsen was one of the chief supports of
the Archaeological Institute, and indeed

n Preface,

acted as its general secretary. The visit
of the King of Prussia to Rome in 1822,
made that sovereign acquainted with the
abilities of the secretary of his legation ;
the present king also — then crown prince
—made his acquaintance about the same
time. The personal esteem which both
contracted for Bunsen accounts for his
rapid advancement in the Prussian diplo-
matic service. On Niebuhr's retirement
from the embassy at Rome, Bunsen suc-
ceeded him, first as Charge" d'affaires and
afterwards as full minister. In this capa-
city he interested himself much in the
Protestant Church and Protestant worship
at Rome, as well as in his classical and
historical studies. A difference between
the papal court and that of Prussia on a
question of ecclesiastical right in the Prus-
fcian States, led to his recall in March 1838.
After a visit to Munich and to England,
he was again in November 1839, in diplo-
matic service as ambassador to the Swiss
Confederacy; and in 1841 he was appoint

Preface. vh

ed Prussian ambassador to England. Re-
taining this post till 1854, when his pecu-
liar opinions on the proper policy of Prus-
sia in the approaching European crisis led
to his resignation or recall, and having
during these thirteen years resided chiefly
in London, Chevalier Bunsen became al-
most a naturalized Englishman; and in-
deed two of his sons have settled in Eng-
land, one as a clergyman in the English
Church. While discharging with peculiar
discretion his duties as Prussian ambassa-
dor, he was at the same time widely
known in English society as a philologist
and a man of letters — a representative, in
intellectual English circles, of the erudition
and scholarly zeal of Germany. The fol-
lowing list of his works, published since
1841, will indicate the grounds of his well-
earned celebrity: — "The Liturgy of the
Passion-week, with a Preface," &c, pub-
lished at Hamburg in 1841, not translated ;
" The Basilicas of Christian Rome in their
Connection with the Idea and History o'

viii Preface.

Church Architecture," <fcc, published at
Munich in 1843, and not translated; "The
Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch, with An-
notations," and " Ignatius of Antioch and
his Age, Seven Letters to Dr. A. Neander,"
both published by the Academy of Ham-
burg in 1844, and the last we believe
translated ; " Die Verfassung der Kirche
der Zukunft," published at Hamburg in
1845, and translated into English in 1847,
under the title of u The Constitution of
the Church of the Future;" iEgyptens
Stelle in der Weltgeschichte," Hamburg,
1 845, and the English translation of which,
" Egypt's Place in Universal History," is
perhaps the best known of the author's
works ; " Memoir on the Constitutional
Rights of the Duchies of Schleswig and
flolstein," presented to Lord Palmerston,
April 1848, and published that year (about
which time other papers on German poli-
tics were published by the author ;) finally,
fiince 1848, contributions to "The Life and
Letters of B. G. Nieuuhr," published by ai»

P r efa ce. ix

English alitor in 1852, from the German
materials ; and an important and elaborate
work published first in 1851, in four vol-
umes, under the title of " Hippolytus,"
and again in a revised and extended form
in 1854, as "Christianity and Mankind:
their Beginnings and Prospects," in seven
volumes — volumes one and two containing
" Hippolytus and his Age," volumes three
and fcur " Outlines of the Philosophy of
Universal History applied to Language
and Religion," and volumes five, six, and
seven, "Analecta Ante-Nicaena." It is
as an Egyptologist and ecclesiastical his-
torian that Chevalier Bunsen has most
widely affected his time. He now lives
in retirement on the Rhine, pursuing his
favorite studies, and often reading or writ-
ing at a standing-desk sixteen hours a day.
An Appendix, entitled by us the Re-
verse-side of the Picture, which we con-
fess did not enter into our original plan,
will show, in the emphatic language of Sir
Win. Hamilton, the blemishes of Luther'i

x Preface,

character. Why should the faults of a
great man be concealed ? To err is hu-
man, and no one claims for Luther exemp-
tion from the common lot of mankind.
Sir We Hamilton has stated the faults
of Luther with such vigor of style and
wealth of erudition, as really to exagger-
ate their importance. Archdeacon Hare
undertook a defence, but found himseli
powerless in the grip of Hercules, and
really damaged the cause of which he
made himself the champion. We have
omitted all passages in Hamilton's notes
that are merely personal, retaining such
facts as demand a place in history. We
must accept Luther, as we accept ourselves,
as we accept many things, for better or for
worse, and be devoutly thankful to Heaven
for whatever good is vouchsafed us. The
sun has its spots, and the great Reformer
has in his character a touch of earth that
Jinks him more closely with our poor hu-
manity. O. W. Wight.

April, 1869

MARTIN LUTHER.

MAKTIN LUTHER

Luther's life is both the epos and the
tragedy of his age. It is an epos be-
cause its first part presents a hero and
a prophet, who conquers apparently in-
superable difficulties, and opens a new
world to the human mind, without any
power but that of divine truth and deep
conviction, or any authority but that
inherent in sincerity and undaunted,
unselfish courage. But Luther's life is
also a tragedy: it is the tragedy of Ger-
many as well as of the hero, her son,
vrho in vain tried to rescue his country
from unholy oppression, and to regen-
erate her from within, as a nation, by
means of the Gospel ; and who died in

14 Martin Luther.

unshaken faith in Christ and in hia
kingdom, although he lived to see his
beloved fatherland going to destruction,
not through, but in spite of, the Refor-
mation.

Both parts of Luther's life are of the
highest interest. In the epic part of it
we see the most arduous work of the
time, — the work for two hundred years
tried in vain by councils, and by pro-
phets and martyrs, with and without
emperors, kings, and princes, — under-
taken by a poor monk alone, who car-
ried it out under the ban both of the
pope and the empire. In the second,
we see him surrounded by friends and
disciples, always the spiritual head of
his nation, and the revered adviser of
princes and preacher of the people;
living in the same poverty as before,
wid leaving his descendants as unpro-
vided for as Aristides left his daughter
So lived and died the greatest hero of

Martin Luther, 15

Christendom since the apostles ; the re-
storer of that form of Christianity which
low sustains Europe, and (with all its
defects) regenerating and purifying the
whole human race ; the founder of the
modern German language and litera-
ture ; the first speaker and debater of
his country; and, at the same time, the
first writer in prose and verse of his
age.

And in what state had he found hip
native country? The once free and
powerful aggregate of nations, which
had overthrown the western empire, con-
quered Gaul, and transfused healthier
blood into the Romanized Celtic popu-
lation of Britain, had gradually been
broken up into nearly four hundred
(with the barons of the empire twelve
hundred) sovereignties, under a power-
less imperial government represented
by emperors bent upon the destruction
of nationality, and by an oligarchic

16 Martin Luther.

diet with seven electoral princes at its
head, three of whom, as ecclesiastics,
were creatures of the pope, while the
remaining four, imitating the emperor,
were occupied rather with the selfish
interests of their princely houses than
with those of their country. When,
in I486, Maximilian was to be elected
king of the Romans, and when he be-
came emperor (in 1493,) Archbishop
Berthold, elector of Mayence, a great
and patriotic man, had prepared, with
some other German princes, a plan for
a sort of national executive, the mem-
bers of which were not to be installed,
as heretofore, by the emperor alone, but
appointed by the Diet and the electors,
in order to form a federal senate to co-
operate with the emperor. But the
Austrian prince, son-in-law of Charles
of Burgundy, and heir to his kingly
estates, was liberal in promises unful-
filled, having lived not only to maintair

Martin Luther, 17

but to strengthen the imperial autoc-
racy. His great comfort on his death*
bed was the reflection that his whole
life had been devoted to the aggran
dizement of his own House of Austria.
The smaller German lords and knight*
of the empire made a last attempt to
maintain their independence, and to
restore the ancient liberties of the Ger-
man nation; but acting in a lawless
manner and without any political wis-
dom, they were crushed by the united
power of the emperor and the electors.
The more eminent and powerful portion
of the mass of the nation was repre-
sented by the wealthy towns, which
had purchased from the emperors the
privileges of free imperial cities ; and
which, with the Hanseatic towns, would
have formed, united with the estate of
the knights, the most complete constit-
uent parts of a House of Commons,
by the side of the princes, dukes, and

18 Martin Luther.

counts of the empire as House of Peers,
The formation of such an effective fed-
eral empire must have been in the mind
of those enlightened men, who, at the
election of Maximilian, perceived that
a constitution was necessary to prevent
Germany from becoming a mere domain
of the emperors. A truly representative
government, federal and unitary, mo-
narchical, and aristocratical, and popu-
lar, would have followed, as a matter
of course, from such a beginning as that
proposed. But since the failure of that
plan nothing effectual had been accom-
plished ; isolation and separation became
more complete ; the peace of the land
was enforced at last, although imper-
fectly ; and the imperial tribunal estab-
lished by Maximilian acted with in-
sufficient authority, and, as was be-
lieved, not with equal justice. The
greatest iniquity was the condition of
the neasantry. The freeholders haa

Martin Luther. 19

hi many parts of Germany been,
if not absorbed, at least considerably
diminished by the feudal system ; but
the great grievances were the illegal
abuses which had grown out of that
system and the always increasing exac
tions of the lords of the manor, who,
particularly in Southern Germany, had
reduced the peasants to real serfs, — men
who had to render unlimited services
and scarcely could support life. There
had been insurrections of peasants, par-
ticularly along the Upper Rhine, in
1491 and again in 1503; but being
without leaders, they were each time
crushed after a bloody struggle, and
the ultimate result was a still greatei
amount of hardship. The chains of the
iufferers were riveted. In short, Ger-
many was suffering from all the same
evils as France and England without
having gained that unity and strength
of government which in those countries

20 Martin Luther.

had resulted from similar struggles.
On the other hand, however, the age
was one of general progress. The in-
vention of printing had given wings to
the human mind ; philology had opened
the sources of historical knowledge as
well as of philosophy and poetry ; astrol-
ogy began to give way to astronomy,
and the idea of the universe emerged
r>ut of Jewish and other fables. As to
Germany in particular, the cradle of the
*rt of printing, Augsburg and other
great cities were, with the Hanseatic
towns, centres of European commerce,
and partook of the resources opened by
the discovery of America. The religious
mind, too, had been awakened since the
days of Wycliffe and of Huss. Believ-
ing Christendom, and, above all, believ-
ing Germany, had hoped for a real re-
form of the Church, the abuses of which
were doubly felt in consequence of the
lhameful immorality of the popes, and

Martin Luther. 21

the ever-increasing exactions of the
court of Koine. The issue of immense
efforts on the part of emperors, princes,
and people, was, that the Council of
Constance delivered Huss to the flames,
and both the councils of Constance and
Basle ended in a more decided suprem-
acy of the Roman pontiffs. Certainly
the religious mind of Germany was not
a little damped by these disappoint-
ments ; but the thirst after a reform was
not quenched by the evident unwilling-
ness of Rome to reform itself. The wise
and good men of the time, however,
could not discover any means to achieve
what was generally desired and demand-
ed, The faith in human, and gradually
also in divine justice upon earth, had
long disappeared in unfortunate Italy,
as the writings of the age prove ; but
now it threatened to vanish even in the
minds of the Germans, in whom that
taith may be called eminently their in-

22 Martin Luther,

nate individual and national religion,
rhe Bible had been repeatedly printed
in the vernacular tongue, but it was,
and continued to be, a book closed with
seven seals. There was a general feel-
ing that the gospel ought to be made
the foundation of purified religion and
doctrine ; but where was the man to re-
suscitate its letter and spirit, and to find
the way from Christ to the soul through
the darkness and the fictions, the usages
and the abuses, of the intervening cen-
turies? The voice of the Friends of
God with Tauler at their head had been
choked in blood, like that of the Wal-
denses; and then, supposing such an
evangelical basis to have been found,
was the existing state of injustice and
wrong to continue? Were the emper
ors to continue to sacrifice the empire
to their dynastic interests — the princes
and the nobles to their covetousness
and licentiousness? Yes; would not

Martin Luther. 23

the overthrow of the ecclesiastical power
.ead to universal conflagration, and re-
bellion, and destruction, and thus Chris-
tendom be thrown back into a worse
barbarism than that out of which they
were anxious to emerge ? In short, the
work (so it seemed) could not be under-
taken but in despair or in enthusiastic
faith. In the former case it must suc-
cumb necessarily; but even if begun
with the faith of Wycliffe and of Huss,
would not the attempt in any case lead
to a long-continued struggle, the end
of which none of those who began it
could live to witness? Who should
enter on so tremendous a course ?

Such was the work to be done, and
such were the general and peculiar diffi-
culties and the state of things in Ger-
many, when Luther undertook it. Lu-
ther devoted a life of almost supernatu-
ral energy and suffering to secure its
Basis ; and although at his death he left

24 Martin Luther.

it surrounded by the greatest dangers,
and one hundred years of bloody strug-
gle were succeeded by another hundred
years of agony and of exhaustion, still
the Reformation survived, and proved
essentially the renovating element of
mankind instead of being (as its enemies
prophesied) the promoter of revolution.
It subsists to this hour as the only dur-
able preserver of all liberties, religious
or political ; and the nations and states
which have embraced the Reformation
are those only which have escaped the
revolutions which for seventy years
have agitated those of the Roman faith.
The life of him who was the beginner
of this great and holy work, and who
broke down the double tyranny of pope
and emperor arrayed against him, must
therefore be considered from a highei
point of view than that of individual
biography, or sectarian panegyric, o*
national vanity and prejudices. The

Martin Luther. 25

article upon Luther will have to be
treated from the central point of the
oniversal history of mankind. This must
be also the rule for fixing the epochs of
Luther's life. One of the reasons why
this life is not yet fully appreciated is,
that it is not sufficiently understood;
and this again arises in great measure
from the want of due observation of the
critical points in the development of the
Reformation and of the history of Eu-
rope, and of Germany in particular.

We shall divide the following con-
densed but complete survey into three
periods. The first will be the period
of preparation, extending to Luther's
first publication of theses against the
kidulgences, 31st October, 1517; the
second will comprise the next eight
years of preaching the gospel and gospel-
uoctrine in its three fundamental parts ;
the third is that of political and theo-
wogical struggles, from 1525 to his death

26 Martin Luther .

m 1546; — preparation, progressive ao
tion, and then struggle within and with'
out. Luther's grand character and
true piety shine in both periods of his
public career; but the culminating
point of his active and creative agency
is in the first. It is, according to our
view the year 1523 which forms the
critical epoch. In 1524 the foundation
of the practical realization of the prin-
ciples of the Keformation was laid with
triumphant success. The year 1525
began hopefully, but ended with the
preparation for a struggle, of which
Luther felt at once that he never should
see the end. Before the close of 1525,
he gave up the cause of Germany, not
in consequence of any fault committed
by himself, but because he saw that hii
party was not prepared for the struggle
with the empire, and was still less re-
ligned to leave the matter to God, who
as Luther firmly believed to his death.

Martin Luther . 27

would never allow his work to perish
till the end of the world. But was not
the end of the world coming now?

First Period: — The Years of Prepa-
ration ; or, the first Thirty foivr Tears
of Luther's Life— (1483— 1517.)

Martin Luther was born at Eisleben,
in the county of Mansfeid, in Thuringia,
on the 10th November, 1483, on the
eve of St. Martin's day, in the same
year as Raphael, nine years after Mi-
chael Angelo, and ten after Copernicus.
His father was a miner, descended from
a family of poor but free peasants, and
possessed forges in Mansfeid, the small
profits of which enabled him to send
his son to the Latin school of the place.
There Martin distinguished himself so
much, that his father (by that time be-
come a member of the municipal coun«
cil) intended him for the study of the
raw. In the mean time, Martin had

28 Martin Luther.

often to go about as one of the poor
choristers, singing and begging at the
doors of charitable people at Magde-
burg and a,t Eisenach, to the colleges
of which towns he was successively
sent. His remarkable appearance and
serious demeanor, his fine tenor voice
and musical talent, procured him the
attention and afterwards the support
and maternal care of a pious matron,
wife of Cotta, burgomaster of Eisenach^
into whose house he was taken. Alrea-
dy, in his eighteenth year, he surpassed
all his fellow-students in knowledge of
of the Latin Classics, and in power of
composition and of eloquence. His
mind took more and more a deeply re-
ligious turn ; but it was not till he had
been for two years studying at Eisen-
ach that he discovered an entire Bible,
having until then only known the ec-
clesiastical extracts from the sacred
rolume, and the history of Hannah ana

Martin Luther, 29

Samuel. He now determined to study
Greek and Hebrew, the two original
languages of the Bible. A dangerous
illness brought him within the near
prospect of death; but he recovered,
and prosecuted his study of philosophy
and Taw, and tried hard to gain inward
peace by a pious life and the greatest
strictness in all external observances.
His natural cheerfulness disappeared;
and after experiencing the shock of the
death of one of his friends by assassi-
nation in the summer of 1505, and soon
after that, being startled by a thunder-
bolt striking the earth by his side, he
determined to give up the world and
retire into the convent of the Augus-
tinians at Erfurt — much against the
wishes and advice of his father, who,
indeed, most strongly remonstrated.
Luther soon experienced the uselessnesa
%f monastic life and discipline, and suf-
fered from the coarseness of his brethren,

80 Martin Luther ,

who felt his exercises of study and me-
ditation to be a reproach upon their
own habits of gossiping and mendicancy.
It was at this period that he began to
study the Old Testament in Hebrew,
yet continuing to fulfill scrupulously the
rules of his order. " I tormented my-
self to death," he said at a later period,
" to make my peace with God, but I
was in darkness and found it not." The
vicar-general of the order, Johann Von
Staupitz, who had passed through the
same discipline with the same result,
comforted him by those remarkable
words, which remained forever engraven
in Luther's heart : — " There is no true
repentance but that which begins with
the love of righteousness and of God.
Love him then who has loved thee
first ! " In the struggles which followed
Luther's real beginning of a new life,
and in the perplexities into which Au-
gustine's doctrine of election threw him

Martin Luther. 31

the book which, after the Bible, exer-
cised the greatest and most beneficial
influence upon his mind, was that prac-
tical concentration of the sermons and
other works of Tauler — the enlightened
Dominican preacher and Christian phi
losopher of the middle of the fourteenth
century — the Theologia Germanica,
written by an anonymous author to-
wards the latter part of that century, of
which we shall have to speak hereafter.
When Luther regained his mental
health, he took courage to be ordained
priest in May 1507. Next year the
Elector of Saxony nominated him pro-
fessor of philosophy at the university
of Wittemberg ; and in 1509 he began
to give, as bachelor in divinity, biblical
lectures. These lectures were the awa-
kening cause of new life in the univer-
sity, and soon a great number of stu-
dents, from all parts of Germany, gath-
ered round Luther. Even professori

82 Martin Luther.

came to attend .his lectures and hear
his preaching. The year 1511 brought
an apparent interruption, but in fact
only a new development of Luther'i
character and knowledge of the world.
He was sent by his order to Rome on
account of some discrepancies of opinion
as to its government. His first impres-
sion of the city was that of profound
admiration, soon mixed with a melan-
choly recollection of Scipio's Homeric
exclamation on the ruins of Carthage.
The tone of flippant impiety at the court
and among the higher clergy of Eome,
under Julius XI., shocked the devout
German monk. He then discovered
the real state of the world in the centre
of the Western Church ; and often in
after life he used to say — " I would not
take 100,000 florins not to have seen
Home." Always anxious to leam, he
took during his stay Hebrew lessona
from a celebrated rabbi, Elias Levita

Martin Luther. 33

but the grand effect upon him was, that
now for the first time he understood
Christ and St. Paul—" The just shall
live by faith" — that mighty saying
with which he had begun at Wittem-
berg his interpretation of the Bible,
now sounded on his ears in the midst
of Rome. He saw that external works
are nothing; that the pious spirit in
which any work is done or any duty
fulfilled — an humble handicraft or the
preaching of sermons — is the only thing
of value in the eye of God. On his re-
turn to the university, the favor of
Staupitz and the generosity of the elec-
tor procured him a present of fifty flor-
ins (ducats) to defray the expenses of
his promotion to the degree of Doctor
of Divinity at the end of 1512. The
solemn oath he had to pronounce on
that occasion (to most only a formulary
without deep meaning) " to devote his
whole life to study, and faithfully to

34 Martin Luther.

expound and defend the Holy Scrij
ture," was to him the seal of his mission
He began his biblical teaching by at
tacking scholasticism, which at that
time was called Aristotelianism. He
showed that the Bible was a deeper
philosophy: that, teaching the nothing-
ness and wickedness of man as long as
he is a selfish creature, it refutes and
condemns all philosophical tenets which
consider man separately from his rela-
tion to Deity. All his contemporaries
praised as unparalleled the clearness of
his Christian doctrine, the impressive
eloquence of his preaching, and the
mildness and sanctity of his character.
Erasmus himself exclaimed — " There ia
not an honest divine who does not side
with Luther." Christ's self-devoted
life and death — Christ crucified, was
the centre of his doctrine ; God's eternal
love to mankind, and the sure triumph
of Faith, were his texts. Already, in

Martin Luther . 3ft

1516, philosophical tenets deduced from
these spiritual principles were publiclj
defended at academical disputations
over which he presided. Luther him-
self preached at Dresden and othei
places the doctrine of justifying and
vivifying faith ; and then accepted, for
a short time, the place of vicar-general
of his order in that year. Even in the
convents, spiritual, moral Christianity
made its way in spite of forms and ob
servances. When the plague came to
Wittemberg, he remained when all
others fled, — " It is my post, and I have
to finish my commentary upon the
Epistle to the Galatians. Should bro-
ther Martin fail, yet the world will not
fail."

Thus came the year of the Reforma-
tion, 1517. With more boldness than
ever, the new pope Leo had sent, in
1516, agents through the world to sell
Indulgences, and the man chosen fo»

36 Martin Luther.

Saxony, Tetzel the Dominican, and his
band, were among the most zealous
preachers of this iniquity. " I would
not exchange," said he in one of his
harangues, " my privilege (as vender of
the papal letters of absolution) against
those which St. Peter has in heaven ;
for I have saved more souls by my in-
dulgences than the apostle by his ser-
mons. Whatever crime one may have
committed " — naming an outrage upon
the person of the Yirgin Mary — " let
him pay well and he will receive par-
don. Likewise the sins which you may
be disposed to commit in future, may
be atoned for beforehand." But he
soon found that a spirit had been awa-
kened among the serious minds of Ger-
many to which such blasphemies were
revolting. Luther preached and spoke
out against this horrible abuse, which
he said he could not believe to be sanc-
tioned by the pope. As a great exhi

Martin Luther. 37

■ — — — .

bition of relics, together with indulg-
ences, was to take place on the day ol
All Saints in the church of Wittemberg,
Luther appeared on the eve, 31st Octo-
ber, in the midst of the pilgrims who
had nocked to the festival, and pasted
up at the church door the ninety-five
theses against indulgences and the super-
stitions connected with them, in firm
although guarded language. The Re-
formation began, like that of St. John
the Baptist, by the preaching of inward
penitence, in opposition to penance and
to absolution purchasable by gold ; but
Luther's preaching had the advan-
tage that it was based upon man's re-
demption by Christ. Penitence was
preached, as originating in the consci-
ousness of man's unworthiness, God 'a
mercy, and the redemption through
Christ as placed before us in the gospel.
The entire doctrine of these immortal
Theses is summed up in the two last

38 Martin Luther .

(94, 95,) which run thus :— " The Chris,
tians are to be exhorted to make every
effort to follow Christ their head through
the cross, through death and hell ; for
it it much better they should through
mneh tribulation enter into the kingdom
of heaven, than acquire a carnal security
by the consolations of a false peace."
A great deed had been done that even-
ing ; a door had been opened for man-
kind into a course whose end is even
now far from being reached. Those
words — not the result of design and
premeditation, but of the irresistible
impulse of an honest mind brought face
to face with the horrible reality of blas-
phemy— soon echoed through the whole
world. Luther's public life had opened ;
the Reformation had begun.

Second Period : — The First Part of
the Public Life of Lutfter; or% tht
Time of Progressive Action.

Martin Luther, 39

The pilgrims had come to Wittem-
berg to buy indulgences, and returned
with the theses of Luther in their hands,,
and the impression of his powerful
evangelical teaching in their hearts.
Luther was urged on in his great work
not by his friends, who were timid and
terrified, but by the violence and frenzy
of Tetzel and his adherents, and soon
afterwards by the despotic acts of the
Pope Leo X., who having at first de-
spised the affair as a monk's quarrel,
thought he could crush it by arbitrary
acts. The national mind in Germany
had taken up the matter with a moral
earnestness which made an impression
not only upon the princes, but even
upon bishops and monks. Compelled
to examine the ancient history of the
church, Luther soon discovered the
whole tissue of fraud and imposture by
which the cancn law of the popes — fhe
ttecretals — had been,fr'>m the ninth cen-

40 Martin Luther.

tury downwards; foisted advisedly and
purposely, upon the Christian world.
There is not one essential point in the
ancient ecclesiastical history bearing
upon the question of the invocation of
saints, of clerical priesthood, and ot
episcopal and metropolitan pretensions,
which his genius did not discern in its
proper light. It is a remarkable fact,
and must needs be considered by the
philosopher of history as a proof of the
Spirit of God having guided Luther,
that what he saw and said, at the ear-
liest stage of historical criticism, re-
specting ecclesiastical forgeries and im-
postures, has all proved true. Soon
after Luther, the Centuriatores Magde-
burgici, the fathers of criticism as tc
ecclesiastical history, took the matter
up. Of course, the Romanists denied
their assertions for two hundred years
and wherever they dare, they still come
back to the old fables and falsehoods

Martin Luther. 4i

But the learned discussion has been
given up, step by step, reluctantly,
and with a very bad grace. Whatever
Luther denounced as fraud or abuse
from its contradiction to the canonical
worship, may be said to have been
since openly or tacitly admitted to be
such. But what produced the greatest
effect at the time were his short popu-
lar treatises, exegetical and practical.
Among these are particularly remark-
able his Interpretation of the Magnifi-
cat, or the Canticle of the Virgin Mary,
his deep and earnest Exposition of the
Ten Commandments, and his Exposition
of the LoroVs Prayer, which latter soon
found its way into Italy, although with-
out Luther's name, and which has never
yet been surpassed, either in genuine
Christian thought or in style. Having
resolved to preach in person throughout
Germany, Luther appeared in the spring
*f 1518 in Heidelberg, where a general

42 Martin Luther.

meeting of his Order was held. The
count palatine, to whom Luther had
been introduced by the elector of Sax-
ony, received him very courteously. In
order to rouse the spirit of the professors,
he held a public disputation on certain
theses, called by him paradoxes, by
which he intended to make apparent
the contrast of the external view of reli-
gion taught by the schoolmen, and the
spiritual and energetic view of gospel
truth based upon justifying faith. It
was here that Bucer, then a Dominican
monk, but soon a zealous Reformer and
controversialist, and the man who, after
Calvin, had among foreigners the great-
est influence upon the English Refor-
mation, heard the voice of the gospel in
his own heart, and resolved to confess
aud preach it at the university.

" It is not the pope (said Luther in
one of his disputations) who governs
Jie church militant of Christ, but Christ

Martin Luther . 4:3

himself ; for it is written that i Christ
must reign till he has put all his ene-
mies under his feet/ He evidently has
not done so yet. Christ's reign, in this
our world, is the reign of faith ; we do
not see our Head, but we have Him."

On his return to Wittemberg in May
1518, Luther wrote and published an
able and moderate exposition of the
theses, and sent it to some German
bishops. He then proclaimed the ab-
solute necessity of a thorough reforma-
tion of the Church, which could only be
effected, with the aid of God, by an
earnest co-operation of the whole of
Christendom. But already Rome med-
itated his excommunication, uttering
threats which he discussed with great
courage and equanimity, saying, " God
alone can reconcile with himself the
fallen soul : He alone can dissolve the
'anion of the soul with himself: blessed
die man who dies under an unjust ex

Martin Luther .

In requesting hia
superior to send his very humble letter
to Pope Leo, in which he declared hit
readiness to defend his cause, Luthei
added, " Mark, I do not wish to entan-
gle you in my own perilous affair, the
consequences of which I am ready to
bear alone. My cause is Christ's and
God's." In the mean time, Luther was
cited repeatedly to appear before the
pope's tribunal at Rome. Leo, indeed,
graciously promised to pay the expenses
of his journey, which certainly would
have been no large outlay, as none
would have been required for his re-
turn. But Luther constantly declined
summonses and invitations, and pro-
posed instead one or other of the Ger-
man universities as judge. This pro-
posal was, of course, not acceptable to
Rome, and therefore he was summoned
oefore the pope's legate in Germany.
The pope's legate was Cardinal Caje

Martin Luther. 45

ranus. Luther was summoned to ap-
pear before him at Augsburg, and all
princes and cities were threatened witb
the interdict, if they did not delivet
Luther into the hands of the pope's
tribunal. It was in these critical cir-
cumstances that Luther formed his ac-
quaintance with Melancthon, who soon
became his most faithful friend, and
remained his zealous adherent for life.
When Melancthon and all his other
friends advised Luther not to go to
Augsburg to be given up to the machi-
nations of the legate, he replied, — " They
have already torn my honor and my
reputation, let them have my body, if
it is the will of God ; but my soul they
shall not take." He undertook the
journey, as a good monk, on foot ; only
provided with letters of recommenda-
tion from the elector, and accompanied
fcy two friends, but without a safe con-
iuct. He arrived at Augsburg on the

46 Martin Luther.

■»

evening of the 7th October, 1518, almof
exhausted by the hardships of the join
ney. The cardinal and his assistant!
employed in vain alternately threat*
and blandishments; scholastic argu-
ments fell powerless, as he answered
them by the Bible, and demanded tc
be refuted by the word of God, to
which he showed the decretals to be
opposed, and therefore, according even
to the declaration of the canonists, of no
value. For these reasons he constantly
refused to retract, as he was required
to do, his two propositions, — the one
that the treasure of indulgences is not
composed of the merits of Christ ; the
other, that he who receives the sacra-
ment must have faith in the grace offer-
ed to him. Luther left Augsburg after
having addressed a firm but respectful
letter to the legate; and his friends,
who were sure that his life was not safe
% moment longer, escorted him before

Martin Luther . 47

daybreak out of the town on horseback.
On his return to Wittemberg, he found
the elector in great anxiety of mind, in
consequence of an imperious missive of
the cardinal legate. Luther wrote to
the prince a dignified xetter, saying, —
" I would, in your place, answer the
cardinal as he deserves for insulting an
honest man without proving him to be
wrong ; but I do not wish to be an in-
cumbrance to your Highness; I am
ready to leave your states, but I will
not go to Kome." The elector refused
to deliver him up to the legate, or to
send him out of the states. Luther
would have gone to France if deprived
of his asylum in Saxony. The elector,
however, having desired him to leave
Wittemberg, and Luther being on the
point of obeying his orders, the prince,
couched by his humility and firmness,
allowed him to remain and to prepare
\iimself for a new conference. At the

f8 Martin Luther .

end of 1518, the papal bull concerning
indulgences appeared, confirming tha
old doctrine, without any reference to
the late dispute. Luther had already
appealed from the pope to a general
council.

The years 1519, 1520, 1521, were
the time of a fierce but triumphant
struggle with the hitherto irresistible
power of Rome, soon openly supported
by the empire. The two first of these
years passed in public conferences and
disputations at Leipzig and elsewhere,
with Eck and other Romanist doctors,
in which Luther was seconded by the
eloquence of the ardent and acute Carl-
stadt, as well as by the learning and
argumentative powers of Melancthon.
People and princes took more and more
part in the dispute, and the controversy
widened from day to day. Luther
openly declared that Huss was right on
ft great many points, and had been un

Martin Luther. 49

justly condemned. Wittemberg be-
came crowded with students and in
quirers, who nocked there from all sides.
Luther not only continued his lectures,
but wrote during this period his most
important expositions and commenta-
ries on the New Testament, — beginning
with the Epistle to the Galatians (Sept.
1519,) which he used to call his own
epistle. During the second year (1520)
the first great political crisis occurred,
on occasion of the death of Maximilian,
and ended fatally, in consequence of
the total want of patriotic and political
wisdom among the German princes.
The elector of Saxony was offered by
one of the most eminent and influential
of his colleagues, the archbishop of
Treves, to be chosen emperor ; but had
not the courage to accept a dignity
which he supposed to require for its
support a more powerful house than his
own. Of all the political acts which

5C Martin Luther.

may be designated, with Dante, ugran
vil rifiato, this was the greatest and
most to be regretted, supposing the
elector to have been wise and courage-
ous enough to give the knights and
cities their proper share in the govern-
ment, and patriotic enough to make the
common good his own.

The German writers have called the
Elector Frederic " the Wise," particu-
larly also with regard to this question.
But long before Ranke pointed out the
political elements then existing for an
effective improvement of the miserable
German constitution, Justus Moser of
Osnabruck had prophetically uttered
the real truth, — " if the emperor at that
time had destroyed the feudal system,
this deed would have been, according
to the spirit in which it was done, the
grandest or the blackest in the history
of the world." Mtfser means that if the
emperor had embraced the Reformed

Martin Luther, 51

faith, and placed himself at the head
of the lower nobility and the cities,
united in one body as the lower house
of a German parliament, this act would
have saved Germany. But we ought
to go further, and say, to expect such a
revolution from a Spanish king was
simply absurd. Frederic alone could,
and probably would, have been led
into that course, just because he had
nothing to rely upon except the German
nation, then more numerous and pow-
erful than it ever has been since. The
so-called capitulations of the empire,
which were accepted by Charles, con-
tained not the slightest guarantee
against religious encroachments on the
side of Rome.

Persecutions aimed at the life of Lu-
ther began very early. Being one day
accosted by a stranger, who concealed
ft pistol in his sleeve, and asked him,
'* Why do you walk thus alone V the

52 Martin Luoher,

intrepid hero answered, " Because I am
on the side of God, who is my strength
and my shield." The unknown person
turned pale and slunk away. The
pope's emissaries in Germany openly
demanded the death of Luther. Flat-
tery and threats were used alternately
to that end. Luther said, " I do not
wish for a cardinal's hat : let them allow
the way of salvation to be open to
Christians, and I shall be satisfied.
All their threats do not frighten me, and
all their promises do not seduce me."
When Francis of Sickingen, the most
powerful and spirited of the knights
of the empire, and the brave and en-
lightened Ulrich Yon Hiitten and
others, offered aid, and said, " force of
arcns was required to drive out the
devil," Luther answered in those im-
mortal words: "By the Word the world
has been conquered ; by the Word the
Church has been saved ; by the Word

Martin Luther. 53

too, she will be restored : I do not de*
gpise your offers, but I will not lean
apon any one but Christ."

Luther's writings of this period are
the finest productions of his pen. His
book On Good Works is the best expo-
sition of the doctrine of justification by
faith. Melancthon says, in reference
to this treatise, — "No writer ever came
nearer St. Paul than Luther has done."
In the same year (1520) he published
that grand address to the nobles of the
German nation, On the Reformation
of Christendom, which may be consid-
ered as the finest specimen of the poli-
tical and patriotic wisdom of a Chris-
tian. There he shows the reality and
supreme dignity of the universal priest-
hood of Christians, and at the same
time demands a thorough reform of the
locial system of Germany and Italy,
beginning with the abrogation of the
Usurped power of the pope, while he

54 Martin Luther.

ealls for a national system of education
as the foundation of a better order oi
things. This address, published on the
26th June 1520, electrified the nation.
It was this appeal which first moved
the patriotic and sainted spirit of Ul-
rich Zwingle, the Swiss Reformer, who
tried in vain to dissuade Rome from
endeavoring to crush Luther by a bull
of excommunication. It was too late.
The great step had been decided upon.
Luther meanwhile continued his
course of preaching and lecturing at
Wittemberg, where nearly two thous
and students were assembled. He
published at this time his Treatise on
the Mass, in which he applied to the
Sacraments the pervading doctrine of
faith, proving from Scripture that every
Sacrament is dead without faith in God's
word and promises. But his most strik
ing work of this period is that on the
Babylonian Captivity of the Church

Martin Luther . 55

(October, 1520), in which he boldly
took the offensive against Kome, attack-
ing the papacy in its principles. It is
remarkable that in this treatise he
speaks of the baptism of infants, who
necessarily are incapable of faith, as oi
an apparent contradiction, which, how-
ever, might be defended. Man is to
have faith in the baptismal vow, (to be
ratified later, after the necessary in-
struction), and therefore he must not
allow himself to be bound by any othei
vow, and must consider the work of
his vocation, whatever it be, as equally
sacred with that of priest or monk.
Till the Christian Church is organized
upon that principle, the Christian peo-
ple live in Babylonian captivity, in
oider to please some of his friends, and
show to the world that he was not in
tractable, he addressed a letter to Leo
X., and inclosed a treatise, On the L%o
wty of the Christian. He pities the

66 Martin Luther .

■ <

pope for having been thrown like Dan-
iel into the midst of wolves, and pre-
dicts that the Roman court (Curia Ro-
mano) will fall because she hates re-
form, and that the world will be obliged,
sooner or later, to apply to her the words
of the prophet : " We would have heal-
ed Babylon, but she is not healed : for-
sake her, and let us go every one unto
his own country." (Jerem. li. 9). " O
most holy father, (he adds), do not listen
to those nattering syrens around you ! "
The treatise itself is a sublime and suc-
cinct exposition of the two truths, that
by faith the soul acquires all that Christ
has, and becomes free through Him;
but then it begins to serve His brethren
voluntarily from thankfulness to God.
The pope's bull arrived in due time;
but found the German nation deaf to
Vts curses, and armed against its argu-
ments. It was called Dr. Eck's bull
*nd Luther raised, on the 4th Novem

Martin Luther. 57

ber, his voice of thunder against it in
a short treatise Against the Bull of
Antichrist; and, on the 17th of the
same month, he drew up, before a no-
tary and five witnesses, a solemn pro-
test, in which he appealed to a general
council. After this manifesto, he invit-
ed the university, on the 10th of De-
cember, 1520, to see the anti-Christian
bull burnt before the church door, and
said : " Now the serious work begins ;
I have begun it in the name of God —
it will be brought to an end by his
might." But where was the power to
resist the pope, if the emperor support-
ed the pope's cause ? And, indeed, he
had promised this support to the pontif-
ical minister soon after his coronation
at Aix-la-Chapelle on the 22d October.
He declared, however, at the same time,
that he must act with every possible
regard towards the elector; and this
prince had courage enough to propose,

58 Martin Luther .

as the only just measure, to grant to
Luther a safe-conduct, and place him
before learned, pious, and impartial
judges. Erasmus, whom he invited,
in order to learn his opinion, said, —
"There was no doubt that the more
virtuous and attached to the Gospel
any man was, the more he was found
to incline towards Luther, who had
been condemned only by two universi-
ties, and by them had not been con-
futed."

The emperor agreed at last to the
proposal of the elector Frederic, and
convened a diet at Worms for 6th Jan-
uary 1521, where the two questions of
religion and of a reform in the consti-
tution of the empire were to be treated.
Luther, though in a suffering state of
health, resolved immediately to appear
when summoned. " If the emperor calls,
it is God's call, — I must go : if I am too
weak to go m good health, I shall havt

Martin Luther. 59

myself carried thither sick. They will
not have my blood, after which they
thirst, unless it is God's will. Two
things I cannot do, — shrink from the call
nor retract my opinions." The nuncio
and his party, on their side, moved
heaven and earth to procure Luther's
condemnation, and threatened the Ger-
mans with extermination, saying, " We
shall excite the one to fight against the
other, that all may perish in their own
blood," — a threat which the papists
have carried out to the best of their
power during two hundred years. The
emperor permitted the nuncio to appear
officially in the diet, and to try to con-
vince the princes of the empire there
assembled. Alexander tried in vain to
communicate to the assembly his theo
logical hatred, or to obtain that Luthei
should be condemned as one judged by
the pope, his books burnt, and his ad-
Uwents persecuted. The impression

60 Martin Luther .

■ i ■

produced by his powerful harangue waa
only transitory : even princes who hated
Luther personally, would not allow his
person and writings and the general
cause of reform to be confounded, and
all crushed together. The abuses and
exactions of Rome were too crying. A
committee, appointed by the diet, pre-
sented a list of one hundred and one
grievances of the German nation against
Rome. This startled the emperor, who,
instead of ordering Luther's books to
be burned, issued only a provisional
order that they should be delivered to
the magistrates. When Luther heard
of the measures preparing against him,
he composed one of his most admirable
treatises, — The Exposition of tie Mag-
nificat, or the Canticle of the Virgin
Mary. He soon learnt what he waa
expected to retract. " If that is meant,
I remain where I am : if the emperor
will call me to have me put to death, I

Martin Luther. 61

shall go." The emperor summoned
him, indeed, on the 6th March, 1521,
to appear before him, and granted him
at last a safe-conduct, on which all his
friends insisted. Luther, in spite of all
warnings, set out with the imperial
herald on the 2d April. Everywhere
on the road he saw the imperial edict
against his book posted up, but wit-
nessed also the hearty sympathies of the
nation. At Erfurt the herald gave way
to the universal request, and, against
his instructions, consented to Luther's
preaching a sermon, — none the less re-
markable for not containing a single
word about himself. On the 16th Lu-
ther entered the imperial city amidst
an immense concourse of people. On
his approach to Worms, the elector's
chancellor entreated him, in the name
of his master, not to enter a town where
hie death was decided. The answer
which Luther returned was simply this:

i

62 Martin Luther.

" Tell jour master, that if there wer&
bs many devils at Worms as tiles on its
roofs, I would enter." When surround-
ed by his friends on the morning of the
17th, on which day he was to appear
before the august assembly, he said : —
" Christ is to me what the head of the
gorgon was to Perseus : I must hold it
up against the devil's attack." When
the hour approached, he fell upon his
knees, and uttered in great agony a
prayer such as can only be pronounced
by a man filled with the spirit of Him
who prayed at Gethsemane. Friends
took down his words ; and the authen-
tic document has been published by
the great historian of the Reformation,
fie rose from prayer and followed the
herald. Before the throne he was asked
two questions, — Whether he acknowl-
edged the works before him tc have
been written by himself? and whether
be would retract what he had said in

Martin Luther. 63

them ? Luther requested to be told the
titles of the books, and then, addressing
the emperor, acknowledged them as
his ; as to the second, he asked for time
to reflect, as he might otherwise con-
found his own opinions with the declar
ations of the Word of God, and either
say too much, or deny Christ and say
too little, incurring thus the penalty
which Christ had denounced, — " Who-
soever shall deny me before men, him
will I also deny before my Father
which is in heaven." The emperor,
struck by this very measured answer,
which some mistook for hesitation,
after a short consultation, granted a
day's delay for the answer, which was
to be by word of mouth. Luther's re-
solution was taken : he only desired to
convince his friends, as well as his ene-
mies, that he did not act with precipi-
tation at so decisive a moment. The
next day he employed in prayer and

Martin Luther,

meditation, making a solemn vow upon
the volume of Scripture to remain faith-
ful to the gospel, should he have to seal
his confession with his blood. Luther's
address to the emperor has been pre-
served, and is a master-piece of elo-
quence as well as of courage. Confin-
ing his answer to the first point, he said,
that " nobody could expect him to re-
tract indiscriminately all he had written
in those books, since even his enemies
admitted that they contained much that
was good and conformable to Scripture.
But I have besides," he continued,
"laid open the almost incredible cor-
ruptions of popery, and given utterance
to complaints almost universal. By
retracting what I have said on this
score, should I not fortify rank tyranny,
and open a still wider door to enormoua
impieties? Nor can I recall what, in
my controversial writings, I have ex-
pressed with too great harshness against

Martin Luther. 65

the supporters of popery, my opponents,
lest I should give them encouragement
to oppress Christian people still more.
I can only say with Christ, — * If I have
spoken evil, bear witness of the evil,'
(John xviii. 23.) I thank God I see how
that the gospel is in our days, as it was
before, the occasion of doubt and discord.
This is the doctrine of the word of God,
• — 1 1 am not come to send peace but a
sword,' (Matt. x. 34.) May this new reign
not begin, and still less continue under
pernicious auspices. The Pharaohs of
Egypt, the kings of Babylon and of
Israel, never worked more effectually
for their own ruin than when they
thought to strengthen their power,
speak thus boldly, not because I thinl
that such great princes want my advice,
but because I will fulfill my duty to-
wards Germany, as she has a right to
expect from her children." The emper-
or, probably in order to confound the

6*

66 Martin Luther.

poor monk, who having been kept
standing bo long in the midst of such
an assembly, and in a suffocating heat,
was almost exhausted in body, ordered
him to repeat the discourse in Latin.
His friends told him he might excuse
himself, but he rallied boldly, and pro-
nounced his speech in Latin with the
same composure and energy as at first ;
and to the reiterated question, whether
he would retract ? Luther replied, — " 1
cannot submit my faith either to the
pope or to councils, for it is clear that
they have often erred and contradicted
themselves. I will retract nothing, un-
less convicted by the very passages of
the word of God which I have quoted."
And then, looking up to the august
assembly before him, he concluded,
saying, — " Here I take my stand : I can-
not do otherwise: so help me God.
A.men !" The courage of Luther mado
a deep impression even upon the em

Martin Luther, 67

peror, who exclaimed, — " Forsooth, the
monk speaks with intrepidity, and with
a confident spirit." The chancellor of
the empire said, — "The emperor and th»
state will see what steps to take against
an obstinate heretic." All his friendg
trembled at this nndisgnised declara-
tion. Lnther repeated, "So help me
God! I can retract nothing." Upon
this he was dismissed, then recalled,
and again asked whether he wonld re-
tract a part of what he had written.
" I have no other answer to make," was
his reply. The Italians and Spaniards
were amazed. Luther was told the diet
would come to a decision the next day.
When returning to his inn, he quieted
the anxious multitude with a few words,
who, seeing the Spaniards and Italians
of the emperor's household follow him
with imprecations and threats, exclaim-
ed lcudly, in the apprehension that he
Vas about to be conducted to prison.

68 Martin Luther .

The elector and other princes now
saw it was their duty to protect such a
man, and sent their ministers to assure
him of their support. The next day
the emperor declared, "he could not
allow that a single monk should disturb
the peace of the Church, and he was re-
solved to let him depart, under condi-
tion of creating no trouble ; but to pro-
ceed against his adherents as against
heretics who are under excommunica-
tion, and interdict them by all means
in his power ; and he demanded of the
estates of the empire to conduct them-
selves as faithful Christians." This ad-
dress, the suggestion of the Italian and
Spanish party, created great commotion.
The most violent members of that party
demanded of the emperor that Luther
should be burnt, and his ashes thrown
into the Rhine, and it is now proved
that, towards the end of his life, Charles
reproached himself bitterly for not hav

Martin Luther . 69

ing thus sacrificed his word for the good
of the Church. But the great majority
of the German party, even Luther's
personal enemies, rejected such a pro-
position with horror, as unworthy of
the good faith of Germans. Some said
openly they had a child, misled by for-
eigners, for an emperor. The emperor
decided at last that three days should
be given to Luther to reconsider what
he had said. The theologians began to
try their skill upon him. " Give up
the Bible as the last appeal ; you allow
all heresies have come from the Bible."
Luther reproached them for their unbe-
lief; and added: "The pope is not judge
in the things that belong to the word
of God ; every Christian man must see
and understand himself how he is to
I ve and to die." Two more days were
granted, without producing any other
"esult than Luther's declaration, — "I
»m ready to renounce the safe-conduct,

TO Martin Luther.

to deliver my life and body into the
hands of the emperor, but the word of
God, never 1 I am also ready to accept
a council, but one which shall judge
only after the Scripture." " What re-
medy can you then name ?" asked the
venerable archbishop of Treves. " Only
that indicated by Gamaliel," replied
Luther ; " if this council or this work be
of men, it will come to naught ; but if
it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it,
lest haply ye be found even to fight
against God." (Acts v., 38, 39.)

Frederic the Wise knew well that
Luther's life was no longer 6afe any-
where at this moment. Charles pro-
nounced an edict of condemnation,
couched in the severest terms. Luther
was placed under the ban of the empire.
After twenty-one days his safe-conduct
would expire, and all persons be forbid-
den to feed or to give him shelter, and
enjoined to deliver him to the emperoj

Martin Luther. 71

or to place him in safe keeping* till the
imperial orders should arrive; all his
adherents were to be seized, and their
goods confiscated; his books burnt;
and the authors of all other books and
prints obnoxious to the pope and the
church were to be taken and punished.
Whoever should violate this edict
should incur the ban of the empire.

This Draconian edict had been passed
by the majority; the friends of Luther,
foreseeing the issue, had left Worms
previously. Such was the condign pun-
nishment that befell the Germans for
having chosen as their emperor the
most powerful foreign prince of Europe,
brought up among the most bigoted of
nations Under these circumstances,
Frederic did what he could. In the
forest if Thuringia, not far from Eise-
nach, i/uther (who was not in the se-
cret) was stopped by armed knights,
■et upon a horse, and conducted to the

72 Martin Luther.

fortified castle a Dove Eisenach — the
Wartburg. Here the dress of a knight
was ready for him. He was desired to
consider himself as a prisoner, and to
*et his beard grow. None of his friends,
even at Wittemberg, knew what had
become of him. He had disappeared ;
the majority believed he had been kid-
napped by his powerful enemies. Such
was the indignation of the people at
this supposed treachery, that the princes
opposed to the Reformation, and even
the pope's agents, began to be alarmed,
and took pains to convince the people
that Luther had not met with ill usage.
Luther remained ten months at the
Wartburg; and it was here that he
began his greatest work, the translation
of the Bible from the original Hebrew
and Greek text. Although suffering
much in health from the confinement
which he modified latterly by excur
•ions in the woods around the castle,

Mh

Martin Luther . 73

he soon also began to compose ne*
works, and obtained the necessary book*
through Melancthon, to whom he id
time made known that he was safe.

It is a most astonishing fact, highly
characteristic both of Lnther and of the
German nation, that, though for nearly
four years, the true doctrine of the gos-
pel had been preached through Ger-
many, and the Romish rites and cere-
monies exhibited as abuses, that yet
not one single word or portion of these
ceremonies had been changed. Luther
consciously believed, what may be called
the latent conviction of his countrymen,
that inward truth will necessarily cor-
rect outward errors, and mold for itself
fitting forms of expression. " The Spirit
bi God," he often said, " must first have
regenerated minds, imbued with true
gospel doctrine; then the new forma
will result naturally from that Spirit."
But it was clearly an unnatural and

74 Martin Luther.

highly dangerous state of things, that
the outward acts of worship should be
utterly at variance with the belief of
the worshipers; and Luther saw that
if he would not take the matter in hand,
others were certain to do so ; the people
themselves might proceed to precipitate
acts. Luther felt this, and so strongly,
that he broke silence ; and in September
published a declaration against monk-
ish vows, in the form of theses, ad-
dressed to the bishops and deacons of
Wittemberg. The audacious attempt
of the Cardinal- Archbishop of Mayence,
Albert of Brandenburg, to renew at
Halle the sale of indulgences, called
forth Luther's philippic (1st November)
Against the new Idol of Halle.

This attack frightened even the court
of the elector of Saxony, who was at
that time rather of opinion that Luther
could do nothing better than to cause
himself to be forgotten. " I canno*

Martin Luther . 75

a. low him to attack my brother elector,
and to disturb the public peace." Lu-
ther's greatness of soul had elevated
the minds of the princes for the mo-
ment ; they had saved his life, but they
wished now to live in peace, such as
they had before. Luther was indignant.
" Do they think I suffered a defeat at
Worms? It was a brilliant victory: so
many against me, and not one to gain-
say the truth." To Spalatin, the chap-
lain and adviser of the elector, he thus
writes : " How, the elector will not al-
low me to write ! and I, for my part,
will not allow him to disallow my
writing. I will rather destroy you, and
the prince, and every creature ! Hav-
ing resisted the pope, should I not resist
his agents?" At the request of Me*
lancthon, he laid aside the treatise he
aad prepared, but wrote to the Cardinal
Archbishop : " Thf>. God who raised
*uch a fire out of the spark kindled by

76 Ma i tin Luther .

the words of a poor mendicant monk
Lives still ; doubt it not. He will resist
a cardinal of Mayence, even though
supported by four emperors ; for above
all He lives to lay low the high cedar,
and humble the proud Pharaohs. Put
down the idol within a fortnight, or I
shall attack you publicly."

The cardinal was frightened by the
sternness of the man of God, and had
the meanness to play the hypocrite.
He thanked Luther by letter for his
" Christian and brotherly reproof,"
promising, " with the help of God, to
live henceforth as a pious bishop and
Christian prince." Luther, however,
could not credit the sincerity of this
declaration: "This man, scarcely ca-
pable to rule over a small parish, will
stand in the way of salvation as long
as he does not throw off the mask of a
cardinal and the pomp of a bishop."

The fact was the cardinal elccto?

Martin Luther . 77

wanted money. He had had to pay
26.000 ducats to Kome for his pallium,
and half of that sum he had charged
upon the Tenders of indulgences in his
ecclesiastical province ; he himself hav-
ing to spend all his princely income on
his court.

During these nearly ten months of
seclusion, Luther's health suffered great-
ly, and subjected him to visions and
hallucinations, in which he believed he
saw the devil in form. His absence
from his congregation, his students, and
his friends and books at "Wittemberg,
weighed heavily upon him. Still, he held
out patiently till events occurred which
called upon the Reformer no longer
to absent himself. He reappeared,
without previous notice, among hia
friends at Wittemberg, whom he found
in great commotion. Thirteen monks
af Luther's own convent had left it on
the ground of religious conviction, with

78 Martin Luther,

the approbation of Melancthon, who
also countenanced the general demand
for the abrogation of the mass. " What
we are to celebrate," said he, " in the
communion, is a sign of the grace
giyen us through Christ, but differing
from symbols invented by man by its
inward power of rendering the heart
certain of the will of God." This is
the simplest and truest form of Luther's
own view of the Lord's Supper, when
he looked on it not scholastically.
There is a reality in Christ's sacrifice
for us ; indeed, it is the reality of our
destiny that we remember it, as He has
bidden His disciples to do : it has there-
fore naturally an inward force, not ar
imaginary effect, like looking on a cross
and similar outward forms. What ca-
lamities would the world have been
spared if this view, in its profound sim-
olicity and depth, had not been dressed
up in formularies partaking of that

Martin Luther. 79

very scholasticism which the Reforma-
tion was to abolish ! The prior of the
convent discontinued from that time
low masses. It was high time, indeed,
that this central point of Christian wor-
ship should be taken in hand by the
Reformers ; for at Zwickau, in Saxony,
an enthusiast, named Stork, arose, who
pretended to have a commission from
the archangel Gabriel to reform and
govern the Church and the world, and
who was supported in this by a fanatic
named Thomas Munzer. When they
appeared at Wittemberg announcing
their visions, even Melancthon was
startled, and especially hesitated as to
the question of psedo-baptism. Carl-
stadt, Luther's disciple and friend, ad-
vocated the most revolutionary changes.
Be broke down the images, preached
bgainst learning and study, and ex-
norted his hearers to go home and gain
\heir bread by digging the ground.

80 Martin Luther.

Luther did not hesitate a moment to
3ondemn the whole movement as a de-
.usion for men who gloried in their own
wisdom, which could only cause a tri-
umph to the enemies of reform. At an
interview which he had with Munzer
and Horst, they said they could prove
to him that they had the Spirit ; for
they would tell him what now passed
in his mind. Luther challenged them
to the proof. " You think in your own
heart that we are right." Luther ex-
claimed,— " Get thee behind me, Satan,"
and dismissed them. " They are quite
right," he said to his friends afterwards ;
" that thought crossed my mind as to
some of their assertions. A spirit evi-
dently was in them, but what could it
be but the evil one?" Here we see the
difference between Luther and Melanc-
thon. Luther was not startled from
his solid judgment as Melancthon had
been by this movement; and Melano*

Martin Luther. 81

» —

thon, in after years, was a more violent
antagonist of anabaptism than Luther.
It was on the 3d of March, 1522, that
Luther left for ever his asylum, and
plunged into the midst of struggles
verj different in their character from
those which he had hitherto so victori-
ously overcome. Before arriving at
Wittemberg, he wrote a remarkable
letter to the elector: — "You wish to
know what to do in the present trouble-
some circumstances. Do nothing. As
for myself, let the command of the em-
peror be executed in town and country.
Do not resist if they come to seize and
kill me ; only let the doors remain open
for the preaching of the word of God."
One of the editors of Luther's works
observes on the margin, — "This is a
marvelous writing of the third and last
Elijah." The elector was touched by
Luther's magnanimity. " I will take
up his defence at the diet ; only let him

Martin Luther

explain his reasons for having returned
to Wittemberg, and say he did so with-
out my orders." Luther complied, add-
ing,— " I can bear your highness' dis-
favor. I have done my duty towards
those whom God has intrusted to me.w
A nd, indeed, he made it his first duty to
preach almost daily the gospel of peace
to his flock. "No violence!" he ex-
claimed, " against the superstitious 01
unbelieving. Let him who believes
draw near, and let him who does not
believe stand aloof. Nobody is to be
constrained ; liberty is essential to faith

and all that belongs to it You

have acted in faith," he said, " but do
not forget charity, and the wisdom which
mothers show in the care of their child-
ren. Let the reform of the mass be un«
dertaken with earnest prayer. The power
of the word is irresistible : the idols of
Athens fell not by force, but before the
mighty words of the apostle." This

Martin Luther. 8b

evangelical meekness of the man who had
braved pope and emperor, and knew not
fear, acted with divine power upon all
minds. The agitation and sedition dis-
appeared. The pretended prophets dis-
persed, or were silenced in public debate.
On the 21st September, 1522, the
translation of the New Testament ap-
peared in two volumes folio, which
sold at about a ducat and a half. The
translation of the Old Testament wa
commenced in the same year. Thou-
sands of copies were read with inde-
scribable delight by the people; who
had now access to the words of Him
whom Luther had preached to them as
the author of our salvation, in theii
mother tongue, in a purity and clear
ness unknown before, and never sui<
Oassed since. By choosing the Fran-
conian dialect in use in the imperial
chancery, Luther made himself intelli
gille both to those whose vernacular

84 Martin Luther.

dialect was High German or Low Ger-
man. Luther translated faithfully but
vernacularly, with a native grace which
op to this day makes his Bible the stand*
ard of the German language. It is
Luther's genius applied to the Bible
which has preserved the only unity,
which is. in our days, remaining to the
German nation, — that of language, lit-
erature, and thought. There is no simi-
lar instance in the known history of the
world of a single man achieving such
a work. His prophetic mind foresaw
that the Scripture would pervade the
living languages and tongues all over
the earth — a process going on still with
more activity than ever.

Meanwhile the vanity and presump-
tion of Henry YHI. induced him to
£iublish a book against Luther, in which
ho heaped upon Luther every oppro-
Drious epithet ; even called in question
his honesty and sincerity, and declared

Martin Luther . 85

him worthy to be burned. His Defence
of the Seven Sacraments merely reca-
pitulates the old scholastic tradition
without the slightest understanding of
the Bible or of the evangelical doctrine.
Henry's ambassador declared to the
pope, in presenting the book, that the
king was now ready to use the sword
against Luther's adherents, after hav-
ing refuted the errors of Luther him-
self. Luther, after having read the book,
declared, contrary to the desire of the
elector and of his other friends, that
he must answer it. " Look," he writes,
"what weapons are used against me:
fire and the fury of those stupid Thom-
ists. Let them burn me : alive I shall
be the enemy of popery; burnt I shall
be its ruin. Everywhere they will find
me in their way, like a bear or a lion.'
In the answer itself he pays the king in
ais own coin. After having taken th<

wown from his head and beaten hin*
a

86 Martin Luther.

like any other controversial writer, he
exclaims, — " I cry gospel ! gospel ! —
Christ I Christ ! and they cease not to
answer, — Usages, usages 1 ordinances,
ordinances ! fathers, fathers ! The apos-
tle St. Paul annihilates with a thunder-
storm from heaven all these fooleries of
Henry." The king wrote to the elector
and the Dukes of Saxony, exhorting
♦hem to extirpate this heresy, as being
the revival of that of Wyeliffe. Their
answer referred Henry to the future
council. The cause of the Reformation
suffered nothing from Henry's attacks
and the invectives of his courtiers. The
movement against the sacerdotal and
monkish vows extended through the
whole of Germany — affecting equally
priests and laymen. Zealous preachers
of the gospel rose from all ranks. Noble
and pious women came forward to de-
clare their faith. Luther's activity waa
tnparalleled. In 1522 he published

Martin Luther . 87

one hundred and thirty treatises, and
eighty-three in the following year.

The whole national literature of Ger-
many became Protestant ; and it is cer-
tainly a remarkable fact, that, in spite
of the Reformation having since lost
almost one-half 01 Germany, its litera-
ture, as well as its historical learning
and philology, still remains Protest-
ant. All the free cities, which were
the cradle of the fine arts as well as of
the wealth of the country, declared in
favor of the Reformation. In Saxony
there was, as Luther had proposed and
demanded, perfect liberty of conscience :
the Romish bishops had their preachers
as well as the Reformers.

Luther's heart expanded in the con-
sciousness of the Reformers' success
Buch as he had never hoped to see.
But he shrunk from the idea that this
work should be regarded as his, and
that he should have the honor of it

Martin Luther,

" My true disciples," he said, " do no*
be'ieve in Luther, but in Jesus Christ;
I myself care nothing about Luther.
What is it to me whether he be a saint
or a miscreant ? It is not him I preach,
but Christ. If the devil can, let him
have Christ ; but if Christ remains ours,
we also shall subsist."

When Leo X. died in this year (1522,)
Adrian, the Flemish tutor of Charles Y.,
his successor, a single-minded professor,
could not (as Jarus tells us) at first con-
ceive how people could find a difficulty
in the matter of indulgences, which he
had explained so well in his lectures,
till a cardinal remarked to him, that
the unbelieving people had no faith in
indulgences whatsoever, and that some
of those who believed in Christ, thought
that exactly for that reason they did
not want them. "The Church must
reform," said he, " but step by step.'
* Yes," said Luther, " putting som«

Martin Luther. 89

eenturies between every step." No-
body wanted his reforms less than the
Romans ; and Adrian exclaimed at last,
-— ■" How unfortunate is the position of
the popes, who are not even free to do
good,"

In November 1522, the diet assem-
bled at Nuremberg on account of an
impending war with the Turks. While
the nuncio and the bishops demanded
Luther's death, the churches of the im-
perial free city resounded with the
doctrine of the gospel; monks being
amongst the most zealous preachers.
What a change from the state of things
at Worms in April, 1521 ! The muni-
cipal council of the free city declared
that if those preachers were to be seized
by force, they would instantly set them
free by force. The legate was obliged
to abandon his plan of arresting them
in the pope's name, as the diet declared
itself incompetent to do so. Adrian's

8*

90 Ma i tin Luther.

sincere avowal of the horrible abuses
of Rome confirmed the people in the
belief that Luther' and the gospel were
right, and made his threatening brief,
addressed to the elector, whom he de-
clared worthy of death and eternal
damnation, appear as ridiculous as it
was arrogant. Luther and all his
friends, whose advice the elector asked
at this critical moment, declared that
he ought not to fight for the gospel,
seeing that the people without whose
consent he could not declare war, would
not in the spirit of faith declare for such
a measure. But other princes were
frightened, because they had no faith
whatever, except in superior strength
and power of pope and emperor. " Let
diem take care," said Luther, " if they
persecute the gospel, there will be a
rebellion and civil war, and the prince*
will be in danger of losing their
dominions. They wish to destroy me,

Martin Luther, 91

» i .1 . .

but I wish to save them. Christ lives
and reigns ; and I shall live and reign
with Him." Indeed, a bloody perse-
cution began in many parts of Germany
arid in the Netherlands. Four Augus-
tinian monks of Antwerp were the first
martyrs; they were burnt on the 1st
July, 1523. Their blood called forth
a rich harvest of new witnesses in Brus-
sels and elsewhere.

When the successor of Adrian VI.,
Clement VH., (Julius de Medici,) sent
in 1524 the celebrated legate Cam-
peggi to Nuremberg, he intended, ac-
coiding to usage, on passing through
Augsburg, to give the people the papai
benediction ; but finding that the cere-
mony called forth public derision, the
legate entered Nuremberg as much in-
ecgnito as Luther had entered Worms
two years before. The German princes
Asked what had become of the one hun-
dred and one grievances of the German

92 Martin Luther .

nation, to which Rome never had deign •
ed to return an answer. Campeggi de-
clared the document to have been con-
Bidered at Home merely as a private
pamphlet ; on which the diet in great
indignation, insisted upon the necessity
of an universal council, and proceeded
to annul the edict of Worms ; declaring,
however, in their communication to the
pope, that " it should be conformed to
as much as possible ;" which, with re-
spect to many princes and cities, meant
not at all. Finally, it was resolved
that a diet, to be held at Spires in No-
vember, was to decide on religious dif-
ferences. Many states which had hith-
erto kept aloof, — the landgrave of
Brandenburg, (not the elector, a strong
papist,) at the head, — declared imme-
diately for the reform, and against the
*even sacraments, the abuses of the
mass, the worship of saints and su-
premacy of the pope. " That is a good

Martzn Luther . 93

move," said Luther. "Frederic must
lose his electoral hat," cried the Roman
agent, " and France and England must
interfere." A catholic league was
formed, by Bavarian and other bishops,
at Eatisbon, under Campeggi's direction
and presidency. But the princes were
still afraid of the universally spreading
national movement. Charles threw his
power into the balance, and declared
that not the German nation, but the
emperor alone, had a right to demand
a council, and the pope alone had the
right to grant it. His designated sue
cessor, his brother Ferdinand, began
the bloody work of persecution in the
hereditary states of Austria immediate-
ly after the congress of the league at
Ratisbon. At Passau in Bavaria, and
at Buda in Hungary, the fagots were
lighted. The dukes of Bavaria followed
the same impulse.

Meanwhile, began at Wittemberg

94 Martin Luther,

the unhappy dispute about the mode in
which the consecration affected the ele-
ments in the celebration of the commu-
nion enjoined by Christ. Luther as yet
f lad not taken up that doctrinal scholastic
opinion, which afterwards produced the
fatal schism. In opposing Carlstadt'a
view, he combated not so much the later
Swiss exposition as Carlstadt's false in-
terpretation of the words, " This is my
body," which was, that Christ, in pro-
nouncing them, had pointed to his own
body, which soon would die. He ad-
mitted soon afterwards, in reference to
that exposition, in 1520, that he was
very near thinking the Swiss interpre-
tation the reasonable view of the case,
but that he had rejected the notion as
a " temptation," the words of the text
seeming to him not to allow of that in-
terpretation.

But in the same manner as this dis-
pute was a prelude t:> the fatal sacra-

Martin Luther. 95

mental disputes with Zwingle and Cal
rin, Luther's defeat in the attempt tc
detach the congregation of a small town
(Orlamunde near Jena,) from Carlstadt,
who introduced iconoclastic and violent
proceedings, proved an index of the
critical state of public feeling. Luther
felt the urgent necessity of applying
the principles of the gospel to Chris-
tian worship and to the constitutions
of the Church. But, on the first point,
he wished changes to be introduced
gradually, and rather as a purifica-
tion of the existing forms, than by an
abrogation. While as to the second,
he felt that it was not his immediate
vocation, and he thought he must leave
t-,he work to the princes, and content
himself with preaching to them the
leading evangelical principles. This,
of course, was not the view of the real
iriends of the Reformation, nor was it
consistent with Luther's usual profound

96 Martin Lutfier .

sagacity, but must be regarded as a
remnant of the effect produced by bis
monkish scholastic education brought
into accordance with Christianity. His
more practical, and perhaps impatiert
friends wanted to see the pagan condi-
tion of the world, with its social rela-
tions, changed into a Christian state of
things, as an earnest and pledge of the
reality of the gospel preaching. Still,
for some time longer, Luther and the
popular feeling marched peaceably to-
gether, and he remained the national
as well as the theological leader. It
was at this time that he directed a pow-
erful address to the municipal councils
of the German towns, in order to ex-
hort them to establish everywhere
Christian schools, as well elementary
as learned. " Oh, my dear Germans,"
he exclaims, " the divine word is now
in abundance offered to you. God
knocks at your door ; open it to him .

mh

Martin Luther, 97

Forget not the poor youth. Look how
the ancient Jewish, Greek, and Roman
world lost the word of God, and perish-
ed. The strength of a town does not
consist in its towers and buildings, but
in counting a great number of learned,
serious, honest, well-educated citizens.
Do not fancy Hebrew and Greek to be
unnecessary. These languages are the
sheath which covers the sword of the
Spirit. The ignorance of the original
Scriptures was an impediment to the
progress of the Waldenses, whose doc-
trine is perfectly pure. How could I
have combated and overthrown pope
and sophists, even having the true faith,
if I had not possessed the languages ?
You must found libraries for learned
books, — not only the fathers, but also
the pagan writers, the fine arts, law,
history, medicine, must be represented
in such collections." These expressions
prove that from the very beginning

98 Ma rtin Zv I her.

and in the very person of Luther, the
Reformation was .connected with schol-
arship,— with philology in its most
extended sense, and equally with the
highest aspiration* of the fine arts.

Here we must conclude this first
glorious period of Luther's life, which,
taken altogether, has no parallel since
the days of the apostle Paul. But the
problem to be solved was not to be
solved by Luther and by Germany:
the progressive, vital element of refor-
mation passed from Germany to Swit-
zerland, and through Switzerland to
France, Holland, England and Scotland.
Before he descended into the grave and
Germany into thraldom, Luther saved
(as much as was in him) his country
and the world, by maintaining the fun
damental principles of the Reformation
against Melancthon's pusillanimity:
but three Protestant princes and the
free cities were the leaders ; the confe*

Martin Luther, 99

Bion was the work of Melancthon. out
the deed of the laity of the nation. Thr
German Reformation was made by &
scholastically trained monk, seconded
by professors; the Swiss Reformation
was the work of a free citizen, an honest
Christian, trained by the classics of an
tiqnity, and nursed in true, hard-won
civil liberty. That was the providential
saving of the world. Luther's work
was continued, preserved, advanced by
the work of the Swiss and French Re-
formers. The monk and the Semitic
element began; the citizens and the
Japhetic element finished. If the one
destroyed Judaism, the other converted
paganism, then most powerful, both as
idolatry and as irreligious learning.
But as long as Luther lived he did not
lose his supremacy, and he deserved to
keep it. His mind was universal, and
therefore catholic in the proper sense
of the word.

100 Martin Luther.

Third Period : — Luther's Life from
1525 to 1546; or the Period of Stag-
nation.

The first year after Luther's return to
Wittemberg was a glorious period : the
true halcyon days of the Reform and
of Luther's personal history. In the
second period of his life, the epic was
changed into tragedy; for the Anabap-
tist tumult arose, and the war of the
peasants broke out in the Black Forest
in July, 1524.

The Anabaptist movement of Thomas
Munzer was the movement of Carlstadt
mixed up with wild enthusiasm, igno-
rance, rebellion, and imposture. Lu-
ther's doctrinal opposition to it was
constant and consistent ; but it would
have been more effectual if Luther had
not involved himself as a schoolman in
an indissoluble difficulty. He was safe
in defending paedo-baptism ; but that

Martin Luther. Ill

could be done without ascribing to it
the power of individual regeneration;
«*n opinion from which the greatest part
of Christendom has most decisively de-
clared its dissent all over the globe. He
was equally justified in maintaining the
word of the gospel : " "Whoever believes,
and is baptized, shall be saved ; " but
he ought not to have forgotten that this
is a juxtaposition of two things, of which
the one can only be of value as a conse-
quence of the first. This brings the
question back to a solemn profession
and vow before the Christian congre-
gation of him who, having been in-
structed in Christ's saving faith, finds
himself ready and compelled to make
that solemn promise, which St. Peter
calls (1st Peter, iii. 21,) — " the promise
(or vow) of a good conscience." Mun-
zer and all the other so-called apostles
of the Spirit, attacked Luther as a mere
worldly man who had sold himself to

102 Martin Luther.

the princes. They abolished chaunting
and all ceremonies, and committed acts
of violence against churches and con-
vents. Luther said to Munzcr, — " The
spirit who moves thee must be an evil
one, for it brings forth nothing but
pillage of convents and churches ; the
greatest robbers on the earth could do
no more." "WTiile combating them by
preaching and writing, he advised, how-
ever, the elector to let them preach
freely. " The word of God itself must
come forward and contend with them.
If their spirit is the true one, Munzer
will fear our constraint ; if ours is the
true one, he will not fear their violence.
Let the spirits meet with all might, and
fight each other. Perhaps some will
be seduced; well, there is no battle
without wounds; but he that fighta
faithfully will be crowned. But if they
ha^e recourse to the sword, then defend

Martin Luther. 103

your own subjects, and order the Ana
baptists to leave the country."

It was indeed a wonderful faith that
produced such toleration in these times,
and it had a wonderful result; — the
elector's states remained undisturbed.
Munzer fled into Switzerland.

It was otherwise with the war of the
peasants. "We have already observed
that the Reformation did not originate
the rebellion of the peasants, but found
it prepared. The first coalitions of the
peasants against the intolerable ra-
pacity and cruelty of the feudal aris-
tocracy had begun before the close of
the fifteenth century ; then they broke
out along the Upper Rhine, in Alsace,
and the palatinate, in 1503; conse-
quently eighteen years before the be-
ginning of Luther's Reformation. No
aoubt Luther's preaching, in the spirit
df the gospel, against all the revolting
injustice and oppression of the con

104 Martin Luther.

science of Christian men, had kept back
that movement for a time ; but Munzei
carried the spirit of rebellion and fanat-
icism among the peasants and part oi
the citizens of the countries of the Upper
Rhine. The fact was, that all the op-
pressed inclined towards Luther, and
the oppressors, most of whom were the
sovereigns, bishops, and abbots, toward*
the pope. The struggle which now
began was therefore between the re-
forming and the papist party, and it
was easily to be foreseen that Luther
would soon be dragged into it. Indeed,
the revolutionary movement, was alrea-
dy, in January, 1525, extending from
the Black Forest to Thuringia and Sax-
ony, the very heart of Luther's sphere
of action. The peasants had proclaimed
twelve articles, of half biblical half po-
litical character. In the introduction
to these articles they protest against tho
imputation of wanting anything but

Martin Luther. 105

the gospel applied to the social body.
They declare their desire to uphold it*
injunctions — peace, patience, and union
There is no doubt that many of them
were sincere in their professions. At
all events, neither the gospel nor its
true preachers and followers were the
revolutionists, but the wild, selfish,
passionate enthusiasts among them and
their leaders. Like the Puritans in the
following century, the peasants say they
raise their voice to God who saved the
people of Israel ; and they believe that
God can save them as well from their
powerful oppressors as he did the Israel-
ites from the hand of Pharaoh.

As to what they demanded in their
twelve articles, all impartial historians
declare that on the whole their demands
were just ; and all of them are now the
law of Germany. As to the influence
of the Reformation, the very words of
Scripture brought forward this time by

106 Martin Luther.

the peasants, prove clearly that Luther's
preaching of the gospel and of truth
had not acted upon the movement as
an incentive but as a corrective. It was
Luther himself who now, in the critical
moment, brought the Word of God to
6peak out against the insurrection, as be-
ing in itself an act of unchristian self-de-
fence, although he acknowledged their
case to be very hard, and their cause, on
the whole, a j ust one. Luther's position
was grand ; he spoke as the arbiter be-
tween lord and peasant; in the name
of Christ exhorting both parties to
peace, and as a good citizen and patriot
giving them advice equally practical
and Christian. He first speaks thus in
substance to the lords : — " I might now
make common cause with the peasants
against you, who impute this insurrec-
tion to the gospel and to my teaching •
whereas I have never ceased to enjoin
•bedience to authority, even to one m

DM

Martin Luther. 107

tyrannical and intolerable as yours.
But I will not envenom the wound;
therefore, my lords, whether friendly
or hostile to me, do not despise either
the advice of a poor man, or this sedi-
tion ; not that you ought to fear the in-
surgents, but fear God the Lord, who
is incensed against you. He may pun-
ish you and turn every stone into a
peasant, and then neither your cuirasses
nor your strength would save you. Put
then bounds to your exactions, — pause
in your hard tyranny, — consider them
as intoxicated, — and treat them with
kindness, that God may not kindle a
fire throughout Germany which none
will be able to extinguish. What you
may perhaps lose will be made good to
you a hundredfold by peace. Some of
the twelve articles of the peasants are
60 equitable that they dishonor you
before God and the world ; they cover
the princes with shame, as the 109th

208 Martin Luther.

Psalm says. I should have yet grave;
things to tell you respecting the gov
ernment of Germany, and I have ad-
dressed you in this cause in my book
to the German nobility. But you have
considered my words as wind, and there-
fore all these demands come now upon
you. You must not refuse their demand
as to choosing pastors who preach to
them the gospel ; the government has
only to see that insurrection and rebel-
lion be not preached; but there must
be perfect liberty to preach the true
gospel as well as the false. The remain
ing articles, which regard the social
state of the peasant, are equally just.
Government is not established for its
own interest, nor to make the people
subservient to caprice and evil passions,
but for the interest of the people. Your
exactions are intolerable; you tako
away from the peasant the fruit of his
abor, in order to spend his money upon

Martin Luther. 109

your finery and luxury. So much for
you."

" Now, as regards you, my dear
friends, the peasants. You want the
free preaching of the gospel to be se-
cured to you. God will assist your just
cause if you follow up your work with
conscience and justice. In that case
you are sure to triumph in the end.
Those of you who may fall in the strug-
gle will be saved. But if you act other-
wise you are lost, soul and body, even
if you have success, and defeat the
princes and lords. Do not believe the
false prophets who have come among
you, even if they invoke the holy name
of the gospel. They will call me a
hypocrite, but I do not mind that. I
wish to save the pious and honest men
among you. I fear God and none else.
Do you fear Him also, and use not His
name in vain, that He may not punish

you. Does not the word of God say ;
10

110 Martin Luther.

1 He who takes up the sword, shall per-
ish by the sword :' and ' Let every soul
be subject to the "higher powers.' You
must not take justice into your own
hands ; that is also the prescription of
the natural law. Do you not see that
you put yourself in the wrong by rebel-
lion ? The government takes away part
of what is yours, but you take away all
in destroying principle. Fix your eye
on Christ at Gethsemane rebuking St.
Peter for using the sword although in
defence of his Master, and on Christ on
the cross praying for his persecutors.
And has not his kingdom triumphed ?
Why have pope and emperor not been
able to put me down ? Why has the
gospel spread the more the greater the
effort they made to hinder and destroy
it ? Because I have never had recourse
to force, but preached obedience even
towards those who persecuted me, de«
pending exclusively on God. But what

Martin Luther. Ill

ever you do, do not try to cover your
enterprise by the cloak of the gospeJ
and the name of Christ. If war there
must be, it will be a war of pagans, for
Christians use other weapons; their
general suffered the cross, and their
triumph is humility: that is their chiv-
alry. Pray, my dear friends, stop and
consider before you proceed further.
Your quotations from the Bible do not
prove your case."

After having thus spoken out boldly
and fearlessly to each party, Luther con-
cludes with a touching expostulation to
both. The substance of his address is in
these words : — " You see you are both in
the wrong, and are drawing the divine
punishments upon you and upon your
common country, Germany. My ad-
vice would be that arbitrators should
oe chosen, some from the nobility, and
some from the towns. You both have
to give up something: let the ma1>

112 Martin Luther.

ter be settled equitably by human
law."

This certainly was the voice of the
true prophet of the age, if ever there
was any. It was not heard. The lords
showed little disposition towards con-
cessions, and what they did offer came
too late, when the bloody struggle had
already begun. The peasants, excited
by Munzer, exceeded, on their side, ail
bounds, and Luther felt himself obliged,
when the stream of rebellion and de-
struction rolled on to Thuringia and
Saxony, to speak out most strongly
against them. The princes leagued to-
gether (for the empire, of course, did
nothing, Charles having full employ-
ment in Spain,) and the peasants were
routed everywhere. Fifty thousand
of their party were slain or butchered
by wholesale executions. Among thig
number there were many of the quiet*
est and most moderate people made

Martin Luther. 113

victims in the general slaughter, be-
cause they were known or suspected to
be friends of the Keformation and of
Luther, which, indeed all the citizens
and peasants of Germany were at that
time.

None felt more deeply this misery,
and what it involved in its effects on the
cause of the gospel in Germany; and
he never recovered the shock. He
thus unburdens his soul at the close of
this fatal year, which crushed for cen-
turies the rights and hopes of the
peasants and laborers, and weakened the
towns and cities, the seats of all that
was best in the national life: — "The
spirit of these tyrants is powerless —
cowardly — estranged from every honest
Ihought. They deserve to be the slaves
of the people. But by the grace of
Christ I am sufficiently revenged by
the contempt I have for them, and
for Satan their God." And in the next

10*

114 Martin Luther.

year he said, " I fear Germany is lost j
it cannot be otherwise, for they will
employ nothing but the sword."

In all this Luther stands higher than
ever, but as a sufferer. He sees the
work in Germany is lost for this time.
He submits, and is supported by hia
faith. So he is consoled when he sees
how Ferdinand of Austria and the
Duke of Bavaria imprison and slaugh-
ter Christians on account of the gospel,
and that not only the pope and the em-
peror are leagued together against the
Reformation, but also the king of
France, besides the king of England.
All the powers of the world are against
him : Germany is doomed to perish, but
the word and the work of God cannot
perish. Even the sad results of a gen-
eral visitation of the churches which he
undertook throughout the states of the
elector did not shake his faith. Ho
sees how ignorant and savage all these

Martin Luther . 115

wars and revolts have rendered even
the Protestant congregations; but he
says the Spirit of God will not forsake
them. The elector Frederic, Luther's
timid but honest supporter, had de-
scended into the tomb on the 5th May,
1525, confessing on his death-bed his
firm belief in Christ as his only Saviour.
His successor, John, known by the
well-deserved name, John the Constant,
followed in his footsteps, and was a firm
friend to Luther.

But the Romish league also gained
friends in the north of Germany. Duke
George of Saxony had, in July of this
year, concluded at Dessau an alliance
against the Reformation with Albert
of Brandenburg, archbishop of Mainz
and Magdeburg, and with the Dukes of
Brunswick, and proved himself in ear-
nest by causing two citizens of Leipzig
to be beheaded for having the writings
&f Luther in their houses. At the same

116 Martin Luther,

time, Charles declared from Spain hif
intention to hold a diet at Augsburg,
evidently in order to crush the Refor-
mation by means of the Catholic league
acting in the name of the empire. His
victory at Pavia made him more than
ever the master of Germany. Finally,
the remains of the party of Munzer,
declared they would take the life of
Luther as a traitor.

It was under such auspices that Lu-
ther decided at last to take a wife, as
he had long advised his friends among
the priests and monks to do. They had
often reminded him of his profession,
and of the duty of himself setting an
example to prove his sincerity. His
father himself urged him continually
to marry. All around him was now in
& stationary, if not a retrograde state.
The university of Wittemberg had suf-
fered much during the late troubles,
and it was generally believed that \h%

i

Martin Luther. 117

Hew elector did not mean to support it.
Luther's warm and loving heart opened
the more readily to the contemplation of
matrimonial union with Catherina von
Bora, a lady twenty-four years of age,
of a noble Saxon family, in 1523, who
had left her convent, together with eight
other sisters, in order to worship Christ
without the oppression of endless cere-
monies, which gave neither light to the
mind nor peace to the soul. Since that
time they had lived together in utter
retirement, forming a free Christian
community. Pious citizens at Torgau
were their protectors, and by them they
were presented to Luther in the convent
of the Augustinians. Soon followed,
as we have seen, the great regenerative
movement of the Christian worship;
and Luther appeared, on the 9th Octo-
ber, 1524, before the congregation in
the simple habit of a secular priest
Luther soon remained alone in the con

118 Martin Luther,

vent ; all the monks had left it. At the
end of the year he sent the key to the
elector, who, however, desired him to
continue to inhabit it. In the mean
time, Luther had observed and wit-
nessed the Christian faith and life of
Catherina von Bora, and on the 11th
of June he married her, in the presence
of Lucas Cranach, the celebrated paint-
er, and of another friend, as witnesses.
Catherina von Bora had no dowry, and
Luther lived on his appointment as pro-
fessor ; he would never take money for
any of his books, but only some copiea
for presents. His marriage was a happy
one, and was blessed with six children.
Luther was a tender husband and the
most loving of fathers.

The princes who were friendly to the
Reformation gradually gained more
courage ; the Elector John of Saxony
established a principle in his states that
all rites should be abrogated which

.wtf.fl

Martin Luther. 119

« — — ■ ■"— ~ ~ "~ ~ — ~~m

were contrary to the Scriptures, and
that the masses for the dead be abolish-
ed at once. The young Landgrave
Philippe of Hesse gained over the son
of the furious Duke George to the cause
of the Keformation. Albert, Duke of
Prussia, had established it at Konigs-
berg, as hereditary duke, abolishing the
tows of the Order, whose master ho
had been, saying : — " There is only one
Order, and that is Christendom." At
the request of the pope, Charles placed
Albert under interdict as an apostate
monk. The evangelical princes found
in all these circumstances a still stronger
motive to act at Augsburg as allies in
the cause of the evangelical party ; and
when the diet opened in December,
1525, they spoke out boldly: — "It is
\iolence which brought on the war of
the peasants. If you will by violence
tear the truth of God out of the hearts of
those who believe, you will draw greater

120 Martin Luther,

dangers and evils upon you." The Ro-
manist party was startled. " The cause
of the holy faith " 'was adjourned to the
next diet at Spires. The landgrave and
the elector made a formal alliance in
February, 1526, at Torgau.

Luther being consulted as to his
opinion, felt helpless. " You have no
faith ; you put not your trust in God ;
leave all to him." The landgrave, the
real head of the evangelical alliance,
perceived that Luther's advice was not
practical — that Luther forsook the duty
of self-defence and the obligation to do
one's duty according to the dictates of
reason, in religious matters as well as
in other political questions. But the
alliance found no new friends. Ger-
many showed all her misery by the
meanness of her princes and the absence
of any great national body to oppose
the league formed by the pope, the em
peror, and the Romanists, throughout

Martin Luther, 121

Europe. The archbishop of Treves pre-
ferred a pension from Charles to the
defence of the national canse. The
evangelically-disposed palatine desired
to avoid getting into trouble on that
account. The imperial city of Frank-
fort, thus surrounded by open enemies
and timid friends, declined to accede to
the alliance. There was more nationa.
feeling and courage in the Anglo-Sax-
on north of Germany. The princes of
Brunswick, Luxemburg, Mecklenburg,
Anhalt, and Mansfeld, assembled at
Magdeburg, and made a solemn and
heroic declaration of their resolution to
pledge their " estates, lives, states, and
subjects, for the maintenance of the
holy word of God, relying on Almighty
God, as whose instrument they would
act." The town of Magdeburg (which
then had about three times as many in-
habitants as now) and Duke Albert of

Prussia adhered to the alliance The
11

122 Martin Luther.

league doubled its efforts. Charles,
strong and rendered safe by the peace
of Madrid concluded with Francis, sent
word from Seville in March, 1526,
through the Romish Duke Henry of
Brunswick, that he would soon come
himself to crush the heresy. Luther
saw the dangers crowding around him:
his advice was, — " "We are threatened
with war ; let us force our enemies to
keep the peace, conquered by the Spirit
of God, before whose throne we must
now combat with the arms of prayer ;
that is the first work to be done."

Towards the end of 1525, Luther had
resolved to answer a book which had
been written against him in the previ-
ous autumn by Erasmus, under the
catching title * On Free Will." Eras-
mus was in his heart rather a skeptic :
he would in his earlier days have pro
fessed openly the cause of the gospel,
and defended it with his superior eru

Martin Luther. 123

dition and knowledge, had lie believed
in its success ; but neither the Swiss nor
the German Reformation gave him that
certainty, and thus, at last, he gave way
to King Henry and others, who urged
him to attack Luther. No controversy
has been less generally understood than
this ; but it may also be said that it
might have been carried on not only
with less malice by Erasmus, but also
with more speculative skill by Luther.
The antagonism is essentially the same
as that of Augustine and Pelagius, or
that between the Jansenists and Jesuits ;
a better speculative method and a deep-
er philosophy of the mind have since
shown how the scholastic method never
could solve that most important as well
as most difficult problem. We have
no hesitation in saying that the result
of dialectic metaphysics is no other than
that Luther was perfectly right and
Erasmus totally wrong, in this dispute ;

y

124 Martin Lu titer.

but it was hopeless from the beginning
Erasmus defined free will as the faculty
of man to decide for himself, be it for
good or evil. Consequently to deny
his thesis in this sense would have been
to deny the moral responsibility of man.
But Luther's ideas respecting moral
free will were as dissonant from this
terminology as St. Paul's reasoning on
faith, from the use of that word in the
sense in which St. James employs or
rather attacks it. In regard to Luther's
terms and fundamental ideas, we have
touched upon them in speaking of the
influence of Tauler and of the Theologia
Germanica upon his mind, when he
was disturbed by what appeared to him
the dreadful consequences of the doc-
trine of grace and election. The the-
ology of the German school of the four-
teenth century rested upon a simpler
because a deeper basis than that of Au
Justine, and, more lately, of CalviD

Martin Luther. 125

» .

and Pascal. There is in man, as a crea-
ture, the power of self-will ; this is not
only evil as such, but the root of all evil,
and sin. The power of deciding whe-
ther or not to commit an action is
therefore nothing but the power of mea
during and contrasting selfish principles,
neither of which being good, can pro-
duce good actions. There is no power
against this selfishness of the creature
but the divine principle. This, the old
German school maintained, is equally
an inherent element in man, — not as a
creature, but as God's image, — and the
instrument of the infinite, divine Spirit,
which is essentially goodness, and love
of what is good and true as such, apart
from any reference to ourselves. To
follow up this view successfully, it is
evidently necessary not to establish an
absolute separation between the divine
principle in itself (in God, the infinite)
%nd in man/ and this was not clearly

126 Martin Luther.

understood by Augustine (whose influ-
ence upon Luther was paramount, in
consequence of his earliest impressions,)
and still less skillfully used by Luther.
The absurdities to which, as each of the
combatants proved of his opponent, the
consistent following up of an antago-
nistic principle conducts, are shown by
Kant to be the necessary organic con-
sequence of our reasoning with finite
notions upon the infinite ; his antinomies
of free will and necessity are those of
Erasmus and Luther, divested of theo-
logical and dogmatic terms. But the
same philosophy (and Kant himself in
his Moral Philosophy r, and his Philos-
ophy of Religion^) shows that Christi-
anity and the analysis of conscience
and moral consciousness of ourselves
teach equally what Luther maintained
against Erasmus. The rationalism of
Erasmus and the Jesuits is condemned
by this philosophy ; and whatever may

Martin Luther. 127

be thought of the philosophical demon-
stration (which we think capable of
great simplification,) St. John and St.
Paul are certainly irreconcilable with
it. " Erasmus ignores God," said Lu-
ther, " and that word is more powerful
than any scholastic argument." Eras-
mus felt himself crushed by Luther's
strong hits, against which his eloquence
availed him nothing. "The victory
must remain," Luther said, "with stam-
mering truth, not with lying elo-
quence ;" and he concluded thus : " Who
ever possessed so much science and
eloquence, and such art in speaking
and in writing ? I have nothing of all
this ; but I glory in one thing — I am a
Christian. May God raise you in the
knowledge of the gospel infinitely above
me, so that you may surpass me as much
in this respect as you do already in all
others." Erasmus henceforth lost all
measure and philosophical equanimity,

138 Martin Luther,

never having sought truth for its own
pake.

The diet of Spires, which was to put
An end to Luther's Reformation, opened
on June 25, 1526. Ferdinand indeed
republished, on the 3d of August, the
decree of Seville, enjoining strict exe-
cution of the edict of Worms ; but, in
the mean time, Clement the Vii. hav-
ing quarreled with Charles, and Fer-
dinand being called to Hungary in
order to maintain against Soliman and
other competitors the crowns of Hun-
gary and Bohemia, left to him by
King Louis after the battle of Mohacz,
Charles commissioned the famous Cap-
tain Frundsberg (the same who had
good-naturedly accosted Luther at
Worms, and who was devoted to the
evangelical cause) to enlist an army in
Germany against the pope, and thou-
sands hastened to join his ranks in con-
sequence. And thus the Reformation

Martin Luther. 129

was saved this time, and a proposition
presented by the cities was accepted,
" that nntil a council met, every gover-
nor should, within his own states, act
according to his conscience." Within
a year, if not a universal, at least a na-
tional council was to meet. In conse-
quence, the Reformation had time to
consolidate itself from 1526 to 1529.
The man of Germany at that time
among the princes was the landgrave,
Philip of Hesse, and he was enlightened
by a citizen. James Sturm, the deputy
of Strasburg at the diet of Spires, had
convinced him that the basis of the true
evangelical church was the acknowl-
edgment of the self-government of the
church by synods composed of repre-
sentatives of the whole Christian people.
Thus the first Protestant constitution —
that agreed upon in Hesse — was assen-
tially that which has proved since to bo
the most universal and tne most power

130 Martin Luther.

ful. For that constitution is neithel
Lutheran nor Anglican, but synodal
Christianity, which has converted and
is now converting and conquering the
world. The constitution acknowledged
the episcopal element, but not episcopal
rule, — sovereignty being invested in
the people of God. "We admit (say the
articles) no word but that of our sove-
reign pastor. Bishops and deacons are
to be elected by the Christian people ;
bishops are to be consecrated by the
imposition of hands of three bishops ;
and deacons may be instituted by im-
position of the hands of the elders. The
general synod is to be held annually,
consisting of the pastor of each parish
and of pious men elected from the midst
of each church, or rather congregation,
or from single churches. Three men
are to be elected yearly to exercise the
right of visitation. This was soon
found to be an inconvenient form ; su

Martin, Luther . 131

Buperintendents (episcopi) for life were
substituted. This board of superintend-
ents became afterwards an oligarchy
and at last a mere instrument of the
state — the consequence of the disruption
of Germany and the paralysis of all
national institutions. Luther had pro-
fessed already, in 1523 and in 1524,
principles entirely identical with those
established in 1526 in Hesse. But there
his action ceased ; he left to the princes
what they had no mind to carry out ;
and what could a people do cut up intc
four hundred sovereignties? Never,
however, did Luther acknowledge Ce
saropapism or Erastianism, as a princi-
ple and as a right. He considered the
rights of the Christian people as a sa-
rred trust, provisionally deposited in
the hands of their representatives.
" Where (he asked) are the people to
form the synods I I cannot find them."
This was a political calamity or mistake,

132 Martin Luther,

but it was not a treason to the rights
of the Christian people. Still more did
Luther abhor the rapacity of the nobil-
ity and of the courtiers to possess them-
selves of the spoils of the Church. It
was Melancthon's influence which fa-
cilitated the despotic system, and ham-
pered the thorough reform of the forms
of worship. Luther withdrew from a
sphere which was not his. He com-
posed, in 1529, the small and great Cat-
echisms, of which the former has main-
tained its place as a guide of popular
doctrine up to this day ; but when mea-
sures of persecution were proposed, he
raised his voice against them. lie
wrote, in 1528, False Teachers are not
to he put to Death / it suffices to Remaoe
them. While Luther preached this doc-
trine, the most bloody persecution went
on in the estates of the elector of Bran-
denburg (where the electress professed
courageously the principles of the gos»

Martin Luther. 135

pel,) in Bavaria, and above all, in the
hereditary states of Austria. In Febru-
ary 1528, the impetuous landgrave was
on the point of committing a rash act, in
consequence of a forged document which
had been shown to him, purporting to
be a secret convention to assassinate
Luther and Melancthon, and crush the
evangelical princes. Philip infected
the elector with his apprehensions, and
violent measures of persecution were to
be resorted to, when Luther and Me-
lancthon both gave, as their solemn ad-
vice, this verdict, — "The attack must
not come from our side, and the guilt
of bloodshedding must not come upon
us. Let the emperor know of this odi-
ous conspiracy." The elector, however,
assembled his troops ; but the forgery
was soon discovered when the document
was communicated to the Romanist
princes. The attitude taken by the
Vrotestant princes had, however, the

134 Martin Luther,

effect of making the archbishop oi
Mainz renounce, in 1528, the spiritual
jurisdiction he had hitherto exercised
over Saxony and Hesse. But among
the public at large, all believed in the
existence of a secret plot against the
evangelical party.

Under these auspices was opened the
celebrated diet of Spires in 1529. The
emperor, who, in the mean time, had
taken Kome, and annihilated the ambi-
tious plans of Clement TIL, now took
again to his natural part. German
credulity and good nature had served
his turn. Now that he felt himself
master of the field, he spoke as a Span-
ish despot; the elector and landgrave
were forbidden to celebrate divine wor-
ship in their hotels, as they had done
Im 1527, after the use of a church had
been denied them. The imperial com-
missioners desired to return to the edict
of Worms of 1521. The solemn act of

Martin Luther. 135

toleration voted by the diet of 1527 was
abrogated by an arbitrary act of the
emperor alone, contrary to the consti-
tution of the empire. Luther, the pro-
scribed, was not present ; but Melanc-
thon, who had accompanied the princes,
reported to him what passed. The ma-
jority of the diet passed at last, on 7th
April, a resolution, that where the edict
of Worms could not be executed with
out fear of revolution, no further reform
would be allowed. This evidently was
nothing but the intended forerunner of
the restoration of Popery.

It was against this iniquitous decree
that the elector, the landgrave, the mar-
grave of Brandenburg, the prince of
Anhalt, and the chancellor of Luneburg,
together with the dignitaries of the
towns, laid down that solemn protesta-
tion from which originates the name of
* Protestants." " The diet has over-
stepped its authority," they said ; " our

136 Martin Luther.

acquired right is, that the decree of
1526, unanimously adopted, do remain
in force until a council can be convened.
Up to this time the decree has main-
tained the peace since, and we protest
against abrogation." Of thirty-five free
cities, fourteen stood out firmly, when
Ferdinand threatened them with the
loss of their privileges. Strasburg,
which was at the head of the protesting
cities, was placed by this most arbitrary
act under the interdict. To the princes
Ferdinand declared there remained no-
thing for them but to submit ; and he
closed the diet without awaiting the
resolutions of the evangelical princes,
who had passed, as was the constitu-
tional custom, into an adjoining apart-
ment in order to deliberate. The princes
then drew up their declaration, and
caused it to be read to the diet, which
had remained sitting when Ferdinand
rose with the imperial commissioners.

Martin Luther. 337

The celebrated Protest of the 15th
April, 1529, is one of the finest and no-
blest documents of Christian history,
displaying an apostolic faith in Christ
and Scripture, and a dignified adher-
ence to national law as far as constitu-
tional liberties are concerned. The
protesting princes and cities claim as
their right, as Germans, what they con-
sider a sacred duty as Christians, —
freely to preach the word of God and
the message of salvation, that all who
will hear it may join the community
of the believers. This great act was,
besides, an earnest of true evangelical
union ; for it was well known that most
of the cities inclined more towards
Zwingle's than towards Luther's view
pf the sacrament. And this union was
not a negative but a positive one; it
was founded on the faith, energetically
and sincerely professed by (Ecolampa-
ilius, as the organ of the Swiss .Reform-

12*

138 Martin Luther.

ed churches, that, " with the visible
symbols invisible grace is given and
received."

If one considers this great act impar-
tially, it is impossible not to see that
neither Luther nor Melancthon were
the real leaders of the time. Already
in 1526, Luther had so little real com-
prehension of what ought to be done, or
was now doing in Germany, to preserve
the gospel from destruction, that he
wrote to a friend on the very same day
that the decree of that first diet at Spires
was published : — " The diet is going on
in the German way, — they drink and
they gamble; for the rest, nothing is
done there." He shows no sympathy
for the first attempt made in Hesse at
self-government of the church ; still less
did he see the importance of the great
act now achieved at Spires by the com
oined courage and Christian commoc
tense of some few princes, and all citiei

Martin Luther. 139

flrhicli could act freely. It was evident
that Charles was now, after the peace
of Cambray, perfect master of Germany;
so far, at least, as to make it impossible
that Germany should become a Prot-
estant nation, and that the protesting
princes and cities had seen the necessity
of strengthening that alliance of which
they had just laid the foundation. Lu-
ther dissuaded the elector from sending
deputies to the meeting agreed upon to
be held at Schmalkalden. " In silence
and rest will be your strength," was his
vote. The elector sent deputies in order
to hinder that anything should be de-
cided. Luther was proud of this suc-
cess. " Christ the Lord will deliver ue
without the landgrave, and even against
the landgrave," was his saying. This
apparent blindness and perversion of
mind in Luther at this time admits of
*wofold explanation. The first is Lu-
ther's loyal and sound policy. He ab

140 Marttn Luther,

horred rebellion, and shuddered from a
civil war, even if it should be unavoid-
able as self-defence. He besides saw
clearly that the princes, divided among
themselves as they were, could do no-
thing against the emperor without the
best part of the nation, represented by
the cities ; and that here, too, there was
want of mutual trust and good will,
and above all of unity. But this key
opens only the outer door to Luther's
mind. To understand him, when he
seems proof against reason, and reason-
ing even his own, it is necessary to con-
sider his unshaken faith, and that he
partook of the quietism of his German
master, Tauler, and the Theologia Ger-
mcmica. " Suffer God to do his work
in you and about you," was the mottc
of that school. But the scholastic train-
ing also had its influence as to his view
of the Zwinglian Eeformation, and it
tentred in Luther's sacramentalism

Martin Luther. 141

This point requires a more ample con-
Bid eration.

It must be confessed that there was
a theological scruple at the bottom of
Luther's opposition to a vigorous Prot-
estant alliance and national attitude,
which was sure not to bring on war,
but to prevent it by making the execu-
tion of the aggressive plans of the pope
and emperors impossible. This be-
trays itself, first, in an uneasiness about
Zwingle's rising influence in Germany ;
and, second, as a doctrinal idiosyncrasy
respecting the sacrament of the com-
munion. Philip of Hesse instantly saw
through this, and said, — "I see they
are against the alliance on account of
the Zwinglians ; well, let us see whether
we cannot make these theological dif
ferences disappear." It is well known
ihat all the efforts made to effect a
union between the Zwinglian and Lu
theran parties, from the conference at

142 Martin Luther.

Marburg, in 1529, to the end of Luther's
life, were fruitless ; and it is impossible
not to admit that the fault was Luther's,
and that he became aware of that only
on his deathbed. As we are thus ar-
rived at the deepest tragedy of Luther's
life and of the history of Protestantism,
and as we must endeavor, within the
narrow limits of an article, to establish
historical truth on these important
points, as far as it is indispensable for
a true and philosophical view of Lu-
ther's life, we think it unnecessary to
prove that there were no mean passions
at work in Luther'a mind ; but we will
say shortly that it was the great tragedy
of the Christian mind during more than
one thousand years to which Luthei
l>aid now his tribute.

When Luther was raised above him
self by the great problem before him
in that glorious period of action, from
1518 to 1524, he considered the sacra-

Martin Luther. 143

ments altogether as a part of the ser-
vices of the church, and a secondary
point, in comparison with the right
view of faith, or the inward Christi-
anity which implies necessarily an un-
selfish, believing, and thankful mind.
Having come to the conviction that
there was no inherent virtue in the ele-
ments abstractedly from the commun-
ion, it was indifferent to him how the
spirituality of the action and the real
presence, even the transubstantiation,
might be reconciled with that faith.
But when he felt himself called upon
at a later period to form a theory re-
specting the doctrine of the sacrament,
he could never get free from the action
of those two theological schools, the
mystical German and the Latin scholas-
tic, in the point where they combined.
Dius, to his end Luther firmly be-
lieved that the act of the priest pro-
aouncing the words, "This is my body,'1

144 Martin Luther.

produced a change in the elements,
making them the body and blood oi
Christ, which he interpreted, however,
as meaning the whole creature of Christ.
Now, nothing was ever more historical-
ly erroneous. It has been shown else-
where by the writer of this article,
through an uninterrupted chain of doc-
umentary evidence of the very litur-
gies, from the second to the sixth cen-
tury, that the recital of the words of the
institution was nothing but the histori-
cal introduction to a prayer of blessing
for the communicants. This prayer
invoked the Spirit of God to descend
upon the assembled worshiping con-
gregation. The first step which uncon-
sciously led to misunderstandings, was,
that the blessing of God was also called
down upon the elements in order to make
the food prepared for the faithful the
body and blood of Christ. The consecra-
tion, in other words, was not the recita)

Martin Luther. 145

of the w< rds of institution, but a prayer,
down te- the time of Basilius, extem-
porized, or at least freely spoken, and
always ending with the Lord's Prayer.
It is a tragical complication that the
question as to what the elements be-
came,— a question unknown and even
unintelligible during the first five centu-
ries,— should have entangled the mighty
evangelical mind of the Eeformer,
whose appointed work was the destruc-
tion of the Romish system of delusion,
founded upon a total perversion of the
fundamental Christian notions respect-
ing sacrifice, priest, and atonement. It
was this fatal ignorance of the oblation
of the sound and organic, as well as the
morbid Christian worship development,
which blinded Luther to such a degree
^s not only to put a simply absurd in-
terpretation upon the words of the in-
stitution, but to base the question of
Christian communion between evangel-

13

146 Martin Luther.

ical Christians upon the same instead
of allowing it to be freely discussed as
a scholastic question. When staking
all upon what he called a literal inter-
pretation of the words, "This is my
body," he ought to have acknowledged
at least, that others might as well take
objection, if not to the absurdity of such
a meaning, at least to the liberty which
Luther claimed for himself at the same
time, of making the body stand for the
whole life contained in it, not to speak
of the objection founded upon the words
of institution as we find them in Luke
and St. Paul.

After these general observations, our
historical relation of what remains to be
told of Luther's life may be very short.

The first event was the conference of
Marburg. The undaunted spirit of the
landgrave, and the heroic self-devoted
Bpirit of Zwingle, who accepted the in
citation at the evident risk of his life

Martin Luther. 147

brought about that celebrated meeting
on the first five days of October, 1527.
The frank and liberal declarations and
concessions of the Swiss Keformers
Boon cleared away all shadows of differ-
ence and dissent, except that about the
sacrament. In the half public disputa-
tion of the 2d of October, Zwingle em-
barrassed Luther by observing, that if
the body of Christ was in the bread
and wine, in any other than a spiritual
sense, he must be present in a given
place, by the very nature of matter, and
not above matter, in heaven. Luther
parried that stroke by saying, — " I do
not mind its contradicting nature, pro-
vided it do not contradict the faith."
Still less could he disentangle himselt
from the words of Christ in the sixth
chapter of St. John, which Zwingle
declared he could not discard, as it
was a text and a clear one. Not more
tatisfactory was Luther's appeal to the

148 Martin Luther.

fathers. The discussions of the fom
following days, however, resulted in
recognizing the point of difference, but
reducing its expression to the mildest
form, and placing it in the background,
as compared with the full statement of
the points on which both parties were
united. Tears of joy filled all eyes ;
and Zwingle, with (Ecolampadius and
Bucer, returned satisfied, although the
promised alliance between Germany and
Switzerland was not concluded owing to
Luther's reluctance. Zwingle had tri-
umphed ; his views became naturalized
in Germany where hitherto they were
little known, and the dreadful words of
Luther, — " Submit yourselves ; believe
as we do, or you cannot be acknowledged
as Christians," were forgotten. But no
Booner had Luther returned to Wittem*
berg than he modified the articles in an
exclusive sense, which necessarily shock-
ed and alienated the Keformed party.

Martin Luther. 149

The issue of the conference at Mar-
burg was a sad prelude to the great and
decisive diet to be held at Augsburg
in 1530, — the diet immortalized by the
first confession of evangelical Chris-
tendom. All the appearances were
changed ; the elector, who, as well as
the landgrave, went there in great
pomp, was received by the emperor in
the most flattering manner. All was to
be peace and concord in Germany. Be-
hind the scenes we see the emperor
quieting his brother Ferdinand, the
head of the Eomish and fanatical party,
who protested against such encourage-
ment to heresy. He writes to him : —
" I shall go on negotiating without
concluding anything ; fear nothing if I
even should conclude ; there will never
be pretexts wanting to you to chastise
the rebels, and you will find people
enough too happy to offer you theii
Dower as a means of vengeance."

13*

150 Martin Luther.

Charles was an Austrian tyrant and
a Spanish bigot, and a great politician
of the Italian school, which has pro-
cured him, even from historians of our
time, che name of a great man. The
only reason why he did not now follow
the advice of the cardinal-legate and
the Spaniards, and of his own brother
Ferdinand, was simply that he thought
the good Germans would do the work
of destruction themselves, and that in
the mean time he would have in them
check upon the pope. But in his own
mind he was ready to sacrifice to the
bigoted party all the constitutional
rights of the diet, as he had sacrificed
that wonderful republic of Florence to
the Medici family at the request of the
holy father, who (said Charles) could
not demand anything wrong: of course,
least of all in a case which regarded
his own house !

The diet of Augsburg is the bright

Martin Luther. 153

point in the life of the Elector John the
Constant, as the conference of Marburg
is in that of the landgrave. When the
emperor's ministers, who preceded him
at Augsburg, announced to the elector
the emperor's intentions, in order to
intimidate him, he said, — " If the em-
peror intends to stop the preaching of
the gospel, I shall immediately betake
myself to my home." Luther had been
left at Coburg, the nearest safe place
for the proscribed, and was consulted
daily. He told the elector he had no
right to say so ; " the emperor was his
master, and Augsburg was an imperial
town." Grand and heroic, although
erroneous, advice of the man whose life
must have been the first sacrifice of a
policy which the elector meant to resist !
The lawyers, however, were here also
in fault ; their Bysantine notions of im-
perial rights made them timid in the
application of the principles of the

152 Martin Luther,

German constitution. The Protestant
princes had a clear constitutional right
to resist the emperor, standing upon
the resolutions and the edict of Worms,
and the solemn declaration of Spires.
Melancthon himself thought they might
maintain the right of preaching the gos-
pel, only abstaining from any contro-
versial point. But undoubtedly those
were right who advised the elector to
remain. As to the chief practical point,
Chancellor Bruck confirmed the elector
in his resolution not to allow the preach-
ing of the gospel to be interdicted to
him and his friends. As to alliances
and leagues, the elector said, — " I have
formed no secret alliances ; but I will
show those I have entered into if the
others will show theirs." In the mean
time Melancthon had by the middle of
April prepared the articles of the con-
fession with their defence, the so-called
tnology. Luther sat all the time in his

Martin Luther. 153

Bolitary castle. "It is my Sinai," lie
said, " where I lift up my hands to pray,
as Moses did during the battle." He
worked at the psalms and the prophets
(he translated here Jeremiah and Eze-
kiel,) and dedicated his hours of recre-
ation to a popular edition of what was
called JEsop's Fables^ as Socrates did
in his prison. " I am making a Zion
out of this Sinai, and build there three
tents, viz., one for the psalms, one for
the prophets, one for ^Esop ;" a truly
German saying, which the historian
of the Reformation ought not to have
censured. How could Luther endure
his solitude in that tremendous crisis
which, as far as the affairs of Germany
were concerned, he saw in darker colors
than anybody, unless he had some re-
creation of this kind. But besides, his
object was to place his ^Esop (which
contains many compositions of his own)
*ai the hands of the people, instead of a

154 Martin Luther.

common popular book of the time, of
the same title, of Jhe lowest and most
immoral description. It was also in
this solitude that he wrote that admir-
able letter to his son Hans, with tne
description of the garden of wonders.
While here he received the news of his
father's death, which affected him deep*
ly, so that his health began to give
way, and his hallucinations, or waking
dreams, recommenced. The news of the
league between Charles V., Francis I.,
the Pope, and Venice, roused at times
the political spirit which was in him.
" I do not believe a word," he said, " as
to the reality of such a league. Mon-
sieur par ma foil (Francis) cannot for-
get the battle of Pa via ; Monsieur in
nomme domini (Clement VIII.) is, first,
a Welsh (Italian,) which is bad enough ;
secondly, a Florentine, which is worse
thirdly, a bastard, a child of the devil ;
*nd, fourthly, he will never forget th«

Martin Luther. 155

indignity of the plundering of Rome.
The Venetians, finally, are "Venetians,
and they have reasons enough to hate
the posterity of Maximilian. Poor
Charles, he is like a sheep among
wolves; God will save him ! " There is
the sound politician and the loyal Ger-
man, hoping against hope, and trusting
his prince's promises as long as he
breathes!

He wrote letters full of comfort to the
elector, and at the same time addressed
one of his most powerful writings to the
clergy assembled in the diet at Augs-
burg, in which he shows them the ab-
surdity of their system, and the un-
christian spirit of their claims. The
address concludes with the prophetic
verse : —

uPestis eram vivus; moriens ero mors tua
Papa!"

1" O Pope, thy plague I was in life; in death ]
shall be thy destruction I *|

156 Martin Luther.

On the 4th of June Gattinara, the
chancellor of Charles, died — an Italian,
who most earnestly wished a real reform
of the church ; and the advocates of per-
secution got, the upper hand. On the
side of the Protestants, the Swiss party
began to suspect Melancthon, and com-
plained of the use of Latin chants and
surplices in Saxony; while, on his side,
Melancthon detested what he called the
seditious principles and worldly reason-
ing of the Swiss. Soon afterwards, we
see him ready to give up some of the
essential points to the emperor, who,
on his approach to Augsburg, said : —
" What do the electors want ? I shall
do what I like." Well had he learned
in Spain the lessons of tyranny which
Cardinal Ximenes knew so well to ap-
ply under Philip II. But he prayed
four hours every day, so that the people
Baid (as he scarcely ever spoke,) — " He
talks more with God than with men."'

Martin Luther, 157

When in the conference with the Pro-
testant princes, he demanded of them
to cease from their present mode oi
worship, they declared that their con-
science did not allow them to do so,
and the margrave of Brandenburg,
bowing down towards Charles, and
putting his hands upon his neck, cried
out, — " Eather than allow myself to be
deprived of the word of the Lord, and
rather than deny my God, I will have
my head cut off at your majesty's feet."
This startled the Spaniard. " Dear
prince," he exclaimed, " not the head,
not the head ! " Imprisonment will do,
he thought all the while, and those in-
cautious words betray that thought.
This was all his Sacred Csesarean Ma-
jesty deigned to utter during the diet.
Great was his wrath when the princes
declared indignantly that they would
5iot consent to follow the procession oi
the host at the festivals of Corjnu> Do*

14

158 Martin Luther.

mini. Why not worship a wafer which
the priest has made God? And why
not show this respect to the emperor
and cardinal ? asked Ferdinand. " We
can and we will worship none but God,"
they unanimously declared. Their wor-
ship went on, and the vast church of
the Franciscans was always crowded;
an eloquent Zwinglian preached pow-
erful sermons from the book of Joshua
about the people of Israel in the face
of Canaan. Charles was furious; an
insidious compromise was proposed ; the
emperor would name preachers who
should simply read the epistles and
gospel of the day, and the ordinary
prayer of confession before the mass.
The pusillanimity of Melancthon, and
the legal opinions of some of the law-
yers of the Protestant princes as to the
emperor's power in an imperial town
overcame the repugnance of the elector
A.11 the Protestant preachers left the

Martin Luther. 159

place in dismay. The whole town was
in consternation. "Our Lord God,"
exclaimed the elector, "has received
order to hold his tongue at the diet ! "
Luther all the while had been quiet,
waiting in patience. But this was too
much for him. " This is the first step,"
said he, " to the demand that we give
up our faith. We have to fight against
the gates of hell." " Keep up your
courage," he wrote to Melancthon, " for
you are the ambassador of a great King."
The elector and his theologians thought
it justifiable that, in virtue of his office
as grand marshal of the empire, he
should bear before the emperor the
sword of state, when the latter attended
the mass of the Holy Ghost at the open
ing of the diet, on which occasion an
Italian archbishop preached a most fa»
natical and insulting sermon against
the Germans, as being worse enemies
of God than the Turks. In the imperial

160 Martin Luther.

opening speech, Charles spoke of the
lamentable dissensions which encroach-
ed upon the imperial majesty, and must
produce sedition and murder. The
Protestants were required to present
their confession. The elector signed it
first ; four other princes and two cities
dfter him, without any observation ; the
landgrave of Hesse, however, did not
sign it without saying he did not agree
as to the doctrine of the communion.
The article says, — " That the body and
blood of Christ are verily present, and
are administered in the Lord's Supper
to those who partake of it [and we dis-
approve those who teach otherwise."]
The words in brackets were left out in
later editions made during Luther's
afetime. On this occasion the princes
took really the lead, and the whole was
done as a great national, not as a sacer-
dotal work, in spite of poor Melanc-
thon's scruples. This good man wai

Martin Luther. 161

Indeed entirely out of his sphere, and
lost his time, and committed the cause
of Protestantism, by trying to bring
about a compromise where there was
no possibility of an honest understand-
ing. In the mean time, Luther was
eft in complete and cruel ignorance of
all that was going on ; and when at last
the letters of Melancthon arrived, they
were full of fears and sad misgivings.
During all this anxious time, Luther
sought and found his comfort in con-
stant prayer and occupation with the
word of God. " Where is Christ's
Church, if it is not with us? Faith
alone is required. I will rather fall
with Christ than stand with Caesar."
Luther reprimanded Melancthon sharp-
ly for his pusillanimity, and some ot
his letters to him are addressed — " To
Master Philip Kleinmuth" (pusillani-
mous.)

After many tergiversations, the Prot-

14*

102 Martin Luther.

estants obtained their just demand ;
the confession, drawn up by Melane-
thon and approved by Luther, was read
in public sitting on the 25th June, 1530.
A great day, worthy of the most glori-
ous days of the apostolic times. Lu-
ther was not present ; he was dead as a
public man. But he lived in God, and
for his faith and country. Nothing
could damp his spirits. " I also have
my diet," he said ; " and what lively
discussions ! " — referring playfully to
the rooks which swarmed round his
tower.

The emperor ordered the confession
to be read in Latin. " No," said the
elector ;"we are Germans, and on Ger-
man ground. I hope, therefore, your
majesty will allow us to speak German."
The emperor gave way, recollecting for
the nonce he was in Germany, and that
the Germans had a language of their
>wn, and the strange fancy of using if

Martin Luther. 163

even in theological affairs. When the
chancellor of the elector had read the
first part of that grand confession,
which expounds the principles of the
Reformation, and, in particular, the
doctrine of justification by faith — " that
faith which is not the mere knowledge
of a historical fact, but that which be-
lieves not only the history, but also the
effect of that history upon the mind," —
there was an indescribable effect visibly
produced upon the assembly. The oppo-
nents felt that there was a reality before
them which they had never imagined ;
and others said, such a profession of faith
by such princes was a more effectual
preaching than that which had been
stopped. " Christ," exclaimed Jonas
(Melancthon's companion,) " is in the
diet, and he does not keep silence : the
Word of God is indeed not to be bound."
And forth these words have gone
through a world wider than that to

164 Martin Luther.

which the apostles preached. After a
pause, the second part, the articles about
the abuses of the Church of Rome, was
read and heard with profound silence
by them itred prelates of that church
who were there assembled. As to
the emperor, he slept during the whole
of the reading, or seemed to sleep, like
a tiger ready to espy the most conven-
ient moment for leaping upon its prey.
In the mean time, he calculated un-
doubtedly, what political capital he
could make of the Protestants against
the pope.

Luther addressed a letter to the car-
dinal elector of Mainz, demanding
nothing but one article, but insisting
upon that unconditionally — the liberty
of preaching the gospel. " Neither
emperor," he says, " nor pope has the
tight of forcing any one to believe."
With Melancthon and the other friends
he insisted upon their leaving Augs*

Martin Luther. 165

burg immediately. " Home — home —
home ! " he exclaimed. " Might it
please God that I should be immolated
at this council, as John Huss was at
Constance ! " All the sayings of Luther
during this crisis are sublime and of a
truly prophetic character. He foresaw
that now every effort would be made
at Augsburg to destroy the principles
of the Reformation by a treacherous
compromise and a false peace. " The
diet," he said, " is a regular dramatic
piece : first, there is the prologue, then
the exposition, then the action, — now
comes the catastrophe ; but I think it
will not be a tragic, but a comic end."
And, indeed, so it turned out to be,
tragical as it was. The first triumphant
effect of the confession soon passed
away; the new converts, particularly
among the prelates, withdrew ; the fan-
atical party doubled its efforts, and
Charles gave way to it, and aided its

166 Martin Luther.

ends by all diplomatic artifices. Me-
lancthon was caught. He entered into
conferences in the vain hope they would
lead to concord; he declared himself
ready to maintain and obey the su-
preme authority of the pope, if he would,
by an act of clemency, connive at, if
not approve, some points which they
could not change. During the treach-
erous conferences which now began,
the emperor tried to intimidate the
elector by threatening not to grant him
the investiture, which the elector claim-
ed, however, as his hereditary right as
brother of his predecessor ; and to fright-
en all the Protestant princes and the
Protestant imperial city of Augsburg
with measures of violence, by calling
m the imperial troops, and keeping the
gates closed. The landgrave escaped.
This act caused dismay among the
ranks of the catholics, for a war could
uot be risked at this moment. The Ko»

Martin Luther, 167

manists changed their tactics ; they con-
ceded, or rather feigned to concede;
for meanwhile, the pope had declared
solemnly that he would not give up
those very points. The Protestants
acknowledged the jurisdiction of the
bishops and the supremacy of the pope,
A cry of indignation rose among the
princes, and, among all, among the
brave citizens of Augsburg. " Rather
die with Jesus Christ," they declared,
" than conquer without Him the favor
of the whole world."

At this critical moment Luther's in-
dignation rose to a holy wrath, like that
of the prophets of old. "I understand,"
said he to Melancthon, " that you have
begun a marvelous work, namely to
make Luther and the pope agree toge-
ther ; but the pope will say that he will
not, and Luther begs to be excused.
Should you, however, after all, succeed
in your affair, I will follow your exam-

168 Martin Luther.

pie, and make an agreement between
Christ and Belial. Take care that you
give not up the justification by faith ;
that is the heel of the seed of the wo-
man to crush the serpent's head. Take
care not to acknowledge the jurisdiction
of the bishops ; they will soon take all.
In short, all your negotiations have no
chance of success unless the pope will
renounce papacy. Now, mind, if you
mean to shut up that glorious eagle,
the gospel, in a sack, as sure as Christ
lives, Luther will come to deliver that
eagle with might."

But Melancthon was changed: Lu-
ther's voice had lost its power over him.
The extreme Protestant views maintain-
ed in a declaration which Zwingle had
delivered to the emperor, disposed him
to cling still more to Rome. All seem-
ed for the moment lost; but Luther's
faith had discerned the way in which
€k>d meant to save the Protestant cause.

Martin Luther, 169

and had said, — " Christ lives ; he who
has vanquished the violence of our en-
emies, can also give us the power of
breaking through their artifices." The
Romanists fortunately insisted upon
four points, — celibacy, confession, the
denial of the cup to the laity, and the
retaining of private masses. This was
too much: the conference separated.
The Romanists now conceded the cup
and the marriage of the priests; but
they would not give up the private
masses, nor the obligation of confession
and penance for the remission of sin,
and required an acknowledgment of the
meritorious character of good works.
Melancthon stood firm, on which the
emperor and Clement played out their
last card ; an ecumenical council should
be convened ; but, in the mean time,
the Protestants should conform to the
doctrine and rites of the Catholic church.
Charles accompanied this communica

15

170 Martin Luther.

tion with the most insulting threati
against the Protestant princes, who de-
clined to negotiate", and declared their
resolution to abide by the status quo oi
Worms until the council should assem-
ble. The emperor indeed went so far
as to forbid the princes to quit Augs-
burg, but the elector was firm as a
rock : his son left the town on the 12th
of September. Melancthon had re-
gained his courage and sagacity. When
Luther heard what was taking place,
he raised his voice from Coburg — " De-
part ! depart ! even if it must be, with
the curse of pope and emperor upon
you. You have confessed Jesus Christ,
you have offered peace, you have obey-
ed the emperor, you have supported
insults of every kind, you have with-
stood blasphemies : now I will encour-
age you, — as one of the faithful mem-
bers of Jesus Christ. He is making
ready our enemies as victims for thf

Martin Luther. 171

sacrifice; he will presently consume
their pride and deliver his people. Yes,
he will bring us safely out of Babylon
and her burning walls." When the
emperor saw that the elector was re-
solved on departing, he communicated
to the five princes and the six towns
(four more having joined since Nurem-
berg and Reutlingen,) a proposal for a
recess, or definitive decree of the diet,
— that six months should elapse to give
time for an arrangement; and mean-
time, Protestants and Catholics should
unite in a common attack upon the
Anabaptists and those who denied the
holy sacrament, the Zwinglians; but
the Protestants alike withstood threats
and flatteries ; and the elector took his
leave, as he had announced, on the 23d
of September.

The author of this article cannot
agree with the saying of the eloquent
Historian of the Reformation, that if tne

172 Martin Luther.

glorification of man was the purpose and
end of God's ways, and not God's glory
alone, one must wish Luther had died
at the Wartburg. "We have seen that
it was he who, in 1524, pacified Wit tern
berg and Saxony by his reappearance,
and achieved wonders as a practical
Reformer; and in 1525, attempted, as
pacificator of Germany, what nobody
but himself could and would have done.
But whose was the never-shaken mind ?
Who among the German theologians
and Reformers was the organ of God
and of the German nation during the
greater part of the momentous diet of
Augsburg ? Who else but the man in
the solitary tower at Coburg! From
this time forth, however, he had nothing
left to do but to look the tragedy in the
face, as a believer in God and his king-
dom on earth, praying and preach-
ing, and finally to die the death of a
faithful and hopeful Christian saint

Martin Luther. 173

All the rest is patient, suffering mar-
tyrdom.

Some of the most powerful Komanist
princes, the archbishop of Mayence at
their head, assured the elector on his de-
parture, that they would never join the
emperor in adopting any violent meas-
ures against him, although the brother
of the archbishop Joachim, elector of
Brandenburg, had presumed to promise
in their name that they would. Even
Ferdinand said some civil words. But
why? Simply because (as Charles
could not refrain from saying in his
wrath) the emperor was more than ever
resolved to resort to arms. " Nothing
but armaments will have any effect,',
he said. Indeed, he announced this as
his resolution immediately to the pope,
and requested him to summon all Chris-
tian princes to assist him. The Catho-
lic league was signed on the 13th of

October. The anti -reformatory move-
is*

174 Martin Luther,

ment was begun in the town of Aupi
burg itself. The answer to this was th*
declaration of sixteen imperial towns,
instead of six, that they would not grant
any subsidies against the Turks so long
as the affairs of Germany remained un
settled. The Zwinglian and Lutheran
towns shook hands; and this was the
expression of the real feeling of the
whole German nation, only priests,
pastors, and theologians excepted. The
Protestant dignitaries declared that they
rej ected the imperial closing declaration,
as the emperor had no right to command
in matters of faith. Luther was the
organ of the universal feeling of the
German people, when he exclaimed,
" Our enemies do not fill me with fear
I, on the contrary, shall put them down
in the strength of the Lord. My life
shall be their executioner; my death
their hell " Indeed, his work was ac-
complished for all countries and for ah

Martin Luther* 175

ages. The rest of his life was one long
pang, although he did not live to see
the most dreadful calamity, — the break-
ing ont of the civil war of religioo
which began immediately after hig
death. He wrote an address to th«
German nation, warning them not to
yield to Rome, and not to trust any ne-
gotiations ; " for," said he, " they know
no argument but force. Be not deceiv-
ed by their words about obedience to the
church. The church is a poor erring
sinner, without Christ ; not the church,
but Christ is the faith." The cause of
the Reformation made progress; the
Protestant alliance, begun by the con-
vention of Schmalkalden, gained new
members ; Denmark acceded, and Joa
chim II. became as staunch a defendei
of the faith of his mother as Joachim I.
had been its violent enemy. As Luthei
had prophesied, the negotiations with
the polish party in 1541, renewed a1

176 Martin Luther.

Ratisbon, led to no result. The emper-
or, at the Diet of Spires in 1544, dared
no longer refuse to the Protestants the
equal right which they claimed. The
Romish council opened at Trent in
1544, and its firet proceeding was to
lead the pope's anathema against the
Protestants.

It is in this latter period (from 1539
to 1543) that a secret letter of advice,
drawn up by Melancthon, was given
by Luther and his friends to the land-
grave Philip in answer to his pressing
request (sanctioned by the landgravine,
who suffered from an incurable inward
disorder) to deliver him from the sin
of fornication, by allowing him to
marry a lady of the landgravine's court.
After the masterly discussion of this sub-
ject by Archdeacon Hareinhis Vindica-
tion of Luther, republished (1855) from
the notes to his Mission of the Comfort-
er, it is not necessary, least of all to Eng

Martin Luther. 177

ash readers, to enter into details in
order to prove the report of Bossuet to
be a tissue of falsehoods and malignity.
We limit, therefore, ourselves to stating
the decisive facts. First. The error
committed in this secret advice by the
Reformers was a perfectly sincere one ;
it arose from an indistinct view of the
applicability of the patriarchal ordi-
nances and of the Mosaic law, which
admits a second wife legally, as indeed
Moses himself seems to have had two
wives at the same time. Now, as the
Reformers could not show an express
abrogation of those ordinances and of
this law, they were led into this sad
mistake. Secondly. There was in their
advice no worldly regard whatever, as
to any benefits and advantages which
might accrue to themselves, or to the
cause of the Reformation. They knew
that the landgrave had his whole heart
In the cause of the Reformation, and

178 Martin Luther.

had often risked his life and states for
it. Thirdly. When in 1540, Philip
divulged the secret, contrary to his
promise, they spoke out and confessed
their mistake, and Melancthon was
brought by his grief to the verge of the
grave. Fourthly. When, in the course
of the controversy, Bucer published, in
1541, his pamphlet in defence of polyg-
amy (under the name of Hulderic
Neobulus,) Luther pronounced his judg-
ment upon the book and on the subject
in the following solemn words : — " He
who desires my judgment upon this
book, let him hear. Thus says Dr.
Martin Luther on the book of Neobu-
lus: He who follows this rogue and
book, and thereupon takes more than
one wife, and means that this should
be a matter of right, may the devil
bless his bath in the bottom of hell.
This, God be praised, I well know how
lo maintain Much less shall thej

Martin Luther. 179

establish the law, that a man may sep-
arate himself from his wife rightfully,
when she has not already separated
herself by open adultery, which this
rogue would also like to teach." We
possess also the sketch of his intended
full reply to Bucer's book ; and there
we find the following sentence : — " We
have already shown in a number of
books, that the law of Moses does not
concern us, and that we are not to look to
the examples in the history of the saints,
much less of the kings, to their faith,
and to God's commandments."

The dark side of this latter portion of
Luther's life is his controversy with the
Reformed. He seemed now and then
inclined to yield to their entreaties for
a union, as is shown by his letter oi
1531 to Bucer of Strasburg ; and he de-
clared his sincere wish for a union to
the landgrave in 1534. He does not
think the work ought to be precipitated,

180 Martin Luther.

but he prays to live to see it take place.
The concord of "VYittemberg, begun by
Bucer in 1536, which left it just possi-
ble to the Reformed not to see their
view of the sacrament excluded, has his
cordial sympathy. Finally, on the 17th
FeDruary, 1537, he writes to tha Bur-
gomaster of Basel, James Meyer, in
terms which excited among the Swiss
the hope he would give up his exclusive
views. But when (Ecolampadius pub-
lished the writings of Zwingle, after
this great and holy man had died a
patriot's death in the battle of Cappel,
Luther became so incensed, that he
wrote, in 1544, two years before hia
death, the most violent of all his sacra-
mentary treatises, — A Short Confession
respecting the Lortfs Supper.

However, his last word on his death-
bed, was one of peace. He is credibly
reported to have said to Melancthon in
tfie course of a dying conversation-

Martin Luttier, 181

f< Dear Philip, I confess to have gone
too far in the affair of the sacrament."

The year 1546 began with "unmistak-
able indications that Charles was now
ready to strike a decisive blow.

Luther had been suffering much du-
ring the last few years, and he felt his
end to be near at hand. In the month
of January, 1546, he undertook a jour-
ney to Eisleben in very inclement wea-
ther, in order to restore peace in the
family of the counts of Mansfeld; he
caught a violent cold; preached four
times ; and took all the time an active
part in the work of conciliation. On
the 17th of February he felt that his
release was at hand ; and at Eisleben,
where he was born, he died, in faith
and prayer, on the following day. No-
thing can be more edifying than the
scene presented by the last days of Lu-
ther, of which we have the most authen-
tic and detailed accounts. When dying,

16

182 Martin Luther.

he collected his last strength and offered
up the following prayer : — " Heavenly
Father, eternal, merciful God, thou hast
revealed to me thy dear Son, our Lord
Jesus Christ : Him I have taught — Him
I have confessed — Him I love as my
Saviour and Redeemer, whom the wick-
ed persecute, dishonor, and reprove.
Take my poor soul up to thee ! " Then
two of his friends put to him the solemn
question, — "Reverend Father, do you
die in Christ and in the doctrine you
have constantly preached?" He an-
swered by an audible and joyful "yes;"
and repeating the verse, " Father, into
thy hands I commend my spirit," he
expired peaceably, without a struggle,
on the 18th of February, 1546, at fom
o'clock in the afternoon.

SPIRITUAL,

PORTRAIT OF LUTHER.

Br THOMAS CARLYLE.

Luther's birthplace was Eisleben in
Baxony ; lie came into the world there
on the 10th of November 1483. It was
an accident that gave this honor to
Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-labor-
ers in a village of that region, named
Mohra, had gone to the Eisleben Win-
ter-Fair : in the tumult of this scene the
Frau Luther was taken with travail,
found refuge in some poor house there,
and the boy she bore was named Mar-
tin Luther. Strange enough to reflect
upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she
had gone with her husband to make
her small merchandisings ; perhaps to

184 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

Bell the lock of yarn she had been spin-
ning, to buy the small winter-necessa-
ries for her narrow hut or household ;
in the whole world, that day, there was
not a more entirely unimportant-look-
ing paii of people than this Miner and
his Wife. And yet what were all Em-
perors, Popes and Potentates, in com-
parison? There was born here, once
more, a Mighty Man ; whose light was
to flame as the beacon over long cen-
turies and epochs of the world; the
whole world and its history was waiting
for this man. It is strange, it is great.
It leads us back to another Birth-hour,
in a still meaner environment, Eighteen
Hundred years ago, — of which it is fit
that we say nothing, that we think only
in silence ; for what words are there !
The Age of Miracles past ? The Age
of Miracles is forever here !

I find it altogether suitable to Lu-
ther's function in this Earth, and doubt

by Thomas Carlyle. 185

Less wisely ordered to that end by the
Providence presiding over him and us
and all things, that he was born poor,
and brought up poor, one of the poor-
est of men. He had to beg, as the
school-children in those times did ; sing-
ing for alms and bread, from door to
door. Hardship, rigorous Necessity
was the poor boy's companion ; no man
nor no thing would put on a false face
to flatter Martin Luther. Among things,
not among the shows of things, had he
to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet
with weak health, with his large greedy
soul, full of all faculty and sensibility.
he suffered greatly. But it was his
task to get acquainted with realiUes1
and keep acquainted with them, at
whatever cost: his task was to bring
the whole world back to reality, for it
had dwelt too long with semblance!
A youth nursed-up in wintry whirl-
winds, in desolate darkness and dim

16*

186 Spiritual Pwtrait of Luther,

eulty, that he may step forth at last
from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as
a true man, as a god: a Christian Odin,
— a right Thor once more, with his
thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly
enough Jotuns and Giant-monsters I

Perhaps the turning incident of his
life, we may fancy, was that death of
his friend Alexis, by lightning, at the
gate of Erfurt. Luther had struggled
up through boyhood, better and worse ;
displaying, in spite of all hindrances,
the largest intellect, eager to learn : his
father judging doubtless that he might
promote himself in the world, set him
upon the study of Law. This was the
path to rise ; Luther, with little will in
it either way, had consented ; he was
now nineteen years of age. Alexis and
he had been to see the old Luther people
at Mansfeld ; were got back again near
Erfurt, when a thunderstorm came on ;
the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at

by Thomas Cwrlyle. 187

Luther's feet. "What is this Life of
ours ? — gone in a moment, burnt up like
a scroll, into the blank Eternity ! What
are all earthly preferments, Chancellor-
Bhips, Kingships? They lie shrunk
together — there ! The Earth has open-
ed on them; in a moment they are
not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck
to the heart, determined to devote
himself to God, and God's service
alone. In spite of all dissuasions from
his father and others, he became a
Monk in the Augustine Convent at
Erfurt.

This was probably the first light-point
in the history of Luther, his purer will
now first decisively uttering itself; but,
for the present, it was still as one light-
point in an element all of darkness. He
says he was a pious monk, ich bin ein
frommer Mdnch gewesen; faithfully,
painfully struggling to work out the
truth of this high act of his ; but it was

188 Spiritual Portrait of .Lather.

to little purpose. His misery had net
lessened; had rather, as it were, in-
creased into infinitude. The drudgeriea
he had to do, as novice in his Convent,
all sorts of slave-work, were not his
grievance : the deep earnest soul of the
man had fallen into all manner of black
scruples, dubitations ; he believed him-
self likely to die soon, and far worse
than die. One hears with a new inter-
est for poor Luther that, at this time,
he lived in terror of the unspeakable
misery ; fancied that he was doomed to
eternal reprobation. Was it not the
humble sincere nature of the man?
What was he, that he should be raised
to Heaven ! He that had known only
misery, and mean slavery: the news
was too blessed to be credible. It could
not become clear to him how, by fasts,
vigils, formalities and mass-work, a
man's soul could be saved. He fell
into the blackest wretchedness ; had to

"by Ihomas CarCyZe. 189

wander staggering as on the verge oi
bottomless Despair.

It must have been a most blessed
discovery, that of an old Latin Bible
which he found in the Erfurt Library
about this time. He had never seen
the Book before. It taught him another
lesson than that of fasts and vigils. A
brother monk too, of pious experience,
was helpful. Luther learned now that
a man was saved not by singing masses,
but by the infinite grace of God : a more
credible hypothesis. He gradually got
himself founded, as on the rock. No
wonder he should venerate the Bible,
which had brought this blessed help to
him. He prized it as the "Word of the
Highest must be prized by such a man.
He determined to hold by that; as
through life and to death he firmly did.

This then is his deliverance from
darkness, his final triumph over dark-
aess, what we call his conversion ; for

190 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

himself the most important of all epochs.
That he should now grow daily in peace
and clearness ; that, unfolding now the
great talents and virtues implanted in
him, he should rise to importance in
his Convent, in his country, and be
found more and more useful in all hon-
est business of life, is a natural result.
He was sent on missions by his Augus-
tine Order, as a man of talent and fidel-
ity fit to do their business well: the
Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named
the Wise, a truly wise and just prince,
had cast his eye on him as a valuable
person ; made him Professor in his new
University of Wittenberg, Preacher
too at Wittenberg ; in both which ca-
pacities, as in all duties he did, this Lu-
ther, in the peaceable sphere of common
life, was gaining more and more esteem
with all good men.

It was in his twenty-seventh year
that he first saw Kome; being sent

hy Thomas Carlyle. 191

thither, as I said, on mission from hia
Convent. Pope Julius the Second, and
what was going on at Rome, must
have filled the mind of Luther with
amazement. He had come as to the
Sacred City, throne of God's Highpriest
on Earth ; and he found it — what we
know! Many thoughts it must have
given the man ; many which we have
no record of, which perhaps he did not
himself know how to utter. This Rome,
this scene of false priests, clothed not in
the beauty of holiness, but in far other
vesture, is false : but what is it to Lu-
ther ? A mean man he, how shall he
reform a world? That waa far from
his thoughts. An humble, solitary man,
why should he at all meddle with the
world ? It was the task of quite higher
men than he. His business was to
guide his own footsteps wisely through
the world. Let him do his own obscure
duty in it well ; the rest, horrible and

i92 Spiritual Portrait of luther,

dismal as it looks, is in God's hand, not
3n his.

It is curious to reflect what might
have been the issue, had Roman Popery
happened to pass this Luther by ; to go
on in its great wasteful orbit, and not
come athwart his little path, and force
him to assault it ! Conceivable enough
that, in this case, he might have held
his peace about the abuses of Rome;
left Providence, and God on high, to
deal with them ! A modest quiet man;
not prompt he to attack irreverently
persons in authority. His clear task,
as I say, was to do his own duty ; to
walk wisely in this world of confused
wickedness, and save his own soul alive.
But the Roman Highpriesthood did
come athwart him : afar off at Witten-
berg he, Luther, could not get lived in
Uonesty for it ; he remonstrated, resist-
ed, came to extremity; was struck at,
•truck again, and so it came to wager

by Thomas Carlyle. 193

of battle between them ! This is worth
attending to in Luther's history. Per-
haps no man of so humble, peaceable a
disposition ever filled the world with
contention. We cannot but see that
he would have loved privacy, quiet dil-
igence in the shade ; that it was against
his will he ever became a notoriety.
Notoriety : what would that do for him ?
The goal of his march through this
world was the Infinite Heaven ; an in-
dubitable goal for him : in a few years,
he should either have attained that, or
lost it forever ! We will say nothing
at all, I think, of that sorrowfullest 01
theories, of its being some mean shop-
keeper grudge, of the Augustine Monk
against the Dominican, that first kin-
dled the wrath of Luther, and produced
the Protestant Eeformation. We will
say to the people who maintain it, if
mdeed any such exist now: Get first

into the sphere of thought by which it
it

194 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

.

is so much as possible to judge of Lu-
ther, or of any man like Luther, other-
wise than distractedly; we may then
begin arguing with you.

The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly
in the way of trade, by Leo Tenth, —
who merely wanted to raise a little mo-
ney, and for the rest seems to have been
a Pagan rather than a Christian, so far
as he was anything, — arrived at Witten-
berg, and drove his scandalous trade
there. Luther's flock bought Indul-
gences; in the confessional of his
Church, people pleaded to him that they
had already got their sins pardoned.
Luther, if he would not be found want-
ing at his own post, a false sluggaid and
coward at the very centre of the little
space of ground that was his own and
nc other man's, had to step forth against
Indulgences, and declare aloud that
they were a futility and sorrowful mock
ery, that no man's sins could be pardoi*

by Thomas Carlyle. 1U5

ed by them. It was the beginning of
the whole Reformation. We know how
it went ; forward from this first public
challenge of Tetzel, on the last day of
October, 1517, through remonstrance
and argument ; — spreading ever wider,
rising ever higher ; till it became un-
quenchable, and enveloped all the world.
Luther's heart's desire was to have this
grief and other griefs amended; his
thougnt was still far other than that of
introducing separation in the Church,
or revolting against the Pope, Father
of Christendom. — The elegant Pagan
Pope cared little about this Monk and
his doctrines ; wished, however to have
done with the noise of him : in a space
of some three years, having tried vari-
ous softer methods, he thought good to
end it \>jfire. He dooms the Monk's
writings to be burnt by the hangman,
%nd his body to be sent bound to Rome,
^-probably for a similar purpose. It

196 Spiritual Portrait of LutK&r,

was the way they had ended with Hubs,
with Jerome, the, century before. A
short argument, fire. Poor Hubs : he
came to that Constance Council with
all imaginable promises and safe-con-
ducts ; an earnest, not rebellious kind
of man : they laid him instantly in a
stone dungeon " three feet wide, six
feet high, seven feet long ;" burnt the
true voice of him out ot this world;
choked it in smoke and fire. That was
not well done !

I, for one, pardon Luther for now
altogether revolting against the Pope.
The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree
of his, had kindled into noble just
wrath the bravest heart then living in
this world. The bravest, if also one of
the humblest, peaceablest ; it was now
kindled. These words of mine, words
of truth and soberness, aiming faith-
fully, as human inability would allow
to promote God's truth on Earth, and

by Thomas Carlyle. 197

lave men's souls, you, God's vicegerent
on earth, answer them by the hangman
and fire ? You will burn me and them,
for answer to the God's message they
strove to bring you 8 You are not God 'a
vicegerent ; you are another's than his,
I think ! I take your Bull, as an em-
parchmented Lie, and burn it. You
will do what you see good next : this is
what I do. — It was on the 10th of De-
cember 1520, three years after the be-
ginning of the business, that Luther
" with a great concourse of people,'*
took this indignant step of burning the
Pope's fire-decree " at the Elster-Gate
of Wittenberg." Wittenberg looked
on " with shoutings ;" the whole world
was looking on. The Pope should not
have provoked that " shout ! " It was
the shout of the awakening of nations.
The quiet German heart, modest, patient
of much, had at length got more than

»t could bear. Formulism, Pagan Pop
11*

198 Sjwitual Portrait of Luther,

ism, and other Falsehood and corrupt
Semblance had ruled long enough :
and here once more was a man found
who durst tell all men that God's
world stood not on semblances but on
realities; that Life was a truth, and not
a lie!

At bottom, as was said above, we
are to consider Luther as a Prophet
Idol-breaker ; a bringer-back of men to
reality. It is the function of great men
and teachers. Mahomet said, These idols
of yours are wood ; you put wax and oil
on them, the flies stick on them, they are
not God, I tell you, they are black wood !
Luther said to the Pope, This thing of
yours that you call a Pardon of Sins,
it is a bit of rag-paper with ink. It is
nothing else; it, and so much like it,
is nothing else. God alone can pardon
tins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood
of God's Church, is that a vain sem
blance, of cloth and parchment ? It ii

by Thomas Cariyve. 199

an awful fact. God's Church is not a
leniblance, Heaven and Hell are not
semblances. I stand on this, since you
drive me to it. Standing on this, I a
poor German Monk am stronger than
you all. I stand solitary, friendless,
but on God's Truth; you with your
tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries
and armories, thunders spiritual and
temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and
are not so strong !

The Diet of Worms, Luther's appear-
ance there on the 17th of April, 1521,
may be considered as the greatest scene
in Modern European History ; the point,
indeed, from which the whole subse-
quent history of civilization takes its
rise. After multiplied negotiations,
disputations, it had come to this. The
young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all
the Princes of Germany, Papal nuncios,
dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are
assembled there: Luther is to appear

200 Spiritual Pcrtrwit of Luther,

and answer for himself, whether he will
recant or not. Tlje world's pomp and
power sits there on this hand : on that,
stands up for God's Truth, one man, the
poor miner Hans Luther's son. Friends
had reminded him of Huss, advised him
not to go ; he would not be advised. A
large company of friends rode out to
meet him, with still more earnest warn-
ings; he answered, "Were there as
many Devils in Worms as there are
roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on
the morrow, as he went to the Hall of
the Diet, crowded the windows and
housetops, some of them calling out to
him, in solemn words, not to recant :
" Whosoever denieth me before men ! "
they cried to him, — as in a kind of
solemn petition and adjuration. Was
it not in reality our petition too, the
petition of the whole world, lying in
dark bondage of soul, paralysed undei
a black spectral Nightmare and triple*

by Thomas Carlyle. 201

hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in
God, and what not : " Free us ; it rests
with thee ; desert us not ! " Luther did
not desert us. His speech, of two hours,
distinguished itself by its respectful,
wise and honest tone; submissive to
whatsoever could lawfully claim sub-
mission, not submissive to any more
than that. His writings, he said, were
partly his own, partly derived from the
Word of God. As to what was his own,
human infirmity entered into it; un-
guarded anger, blindness, many things
doubtless which it were a blessing for
him could he abolish altogether. But
as to what stood on sound truth and the
"Word of God, he could not recant it.
How could he? " Confute me," he
concluded, " by proofs of Scripture, or
else by plain just arguments : I cannot
decant otherwise. For it is neither safe
Qor prudent to do aught against con*
•cience. Here stand I; I can do no

202 Spiritual Portrait of Zuther,

other: God assist me!" — It is, as we
say, the greatest moment in the Modern
History of Men. English Puritanism,
England and its Parliaments, Americas,
and vast work these two centuries;
French Revolution, Europe and its
work everywhere at present : the germ
of it all lay there : had Luther in that
moment done other, it had all been
otherwise ! The European World was
asking him : Am I to sink ever lower
into falsehood, stagnant putrescence,
loathsome accursed death; or, with
whatever paroxysm, to cast the false-
hoods out of me, and be cured and
live?

Great wars, contentions and disunion
followed out of this Reformation ; which
last down to our day, and are yet fai
from ended. Great talk and crimina-
tion has been made about these. They
we lamentable, undeniable; but afte

hy Thomas Carlyle. 203

all, what has Luther or his cause to do
with them ? It seems strange reasoning
to charge the Reformation with all this.
When Hercules turned the purifying
river into King Augeas's stables, I have
no doubt the confusion that resulted
was considerable all around : but I think
it was not Hercules's blame; it was
some other's blame ! The Reformation
might bring what results it liked when
it came, but the Reformation simply
could not help coming. To all Popes
and Popes's advocates, expostulating,
lamenting and accusing, the answer of
the world is : Once for all, your Pope-
hood has become untrue. No matter
how good it was, how good you say it
Is, we cannot believe it ; the light of our
whole mind, given us to walk by from
tEeaven above, finds it henceforth a
thing unbelievable. We will not be-
lieve it, we will not try to believe it, —
we dare not! The thing is untrue;

204 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

, L-.

we were traitors against the Giver of all
Truth, if we durst ^pretend to think it
true. Away with it ; let whatsoever likes
come in the place of it ; with it we can
have no farther trade ! Luther and his
Protestantism is not responsible for
wars; the false Simulacra that forced
him to protest, they are responsible.
Luther did what every man that God
has made has not only the right,
but lies under the sacred duty to do :
answered a Falsehood when it ques-
tioned him, Dost thou believe me? —
No! — At what cost soever, without
counting of costs, this thing behoved to
be done. Union, organization spiritual
and material, a far nobler than any
Popedom or Feudalism in their truest
days, I never doubt, is coming for the
world; sure to come. But on Fact
alone, not on Semblance and Simula-
crum, will it be able either to come, or tc
stand when come. With union ground

by Thomas Carlyle. 205

©d on falsehood, and ordering us to
speak and act lies, we will not have
anything to do. Peace % A brutal leth»
argy is peaceable, the noisome grave
is peaceable. We hope for a living
peace, not a dead one !

And yet, in prizing justly the indis-
pensable blessings of the New, let us
not be unjust to the Old. The Old was
true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days
it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or
other dishonesty, to get itself reckon-
ed true. It was good then ; nay there
is in the soul of it a deathless good.
The cry of "No Popery," is foolish
enough in these days. The speculation
that Popery is on the increase, building
uew chapels, and so forth, may pass for
one of the idlest ever started. Yery curi-
ous : to count up a few Popish chapels,
listen to a few Protestant logic-chop-
pings, — to much dull-droning drowsy
inanity that still calls itself Protestant,

18

206 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

and say: See, Protestantism is dead)
Popism is more alive than it, will be
alive after it! — Drowsy inanities, not
a few, that call themselves Protestant
are dead; but Protestantism has not
died yet, that I hear of! Protestantism,
if we will look, has in these days pro-
duced its Goethe, its Napoleon ; Ger-
man Literature and the French Revo-
lution; rather considerable signs of life!
Nay, at bottom, what else is alive out
Protestantism? The life of most else
that one meets is a galvanic one merely
— not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of
life!

Popery can build new chapels ; wel-
come to do so, to all lengths. Popery
cannot come back, any more than Pa-
ganism can, — which also still lingers in
Bome countries. But, indeed, it is with
these things, as with the ebbing of the
lea : you look at the waves oscillating
hither, thither on the beach ; for min-

by Thomas Carlyle. 207

utes you cannot tell how it is going ;
look in half an honr where it is, — look
in half a century where your Popehood
is ! Alas, would there were no greater
danger to our Europe than the poor old
Pope's revival ! Thor may as soon try
to revive. — And withal this oscillation
has a meaning. The poor old Pope-
hood will not die away entirely, as Thor
has done, for some time yet ; nor ought
it. We may say, the Old never dies
till this happen, till all the soul of good
that was in it have got itself transfused
into the practical New. "While a good
work remains capable of being done by
the Romish form ; or, what is inclusive
of all, while a pious Ufe remains capa-
ble of being led by it, just so long, if
we consider, will this or the other hu-
man soul adopt it, go about as a living
witness of it. So long it will obtrude
itself on the eye of us who reject it,
.ill we in our practice too have appro-

208 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

priated whatsoever of truth was in it
Then, but also not till then, it will have
no charm more for any man. It lasts
here for a purpose. Let it last as *ong
as it can.

Of Luther 1 will add now, in refer-
ence to all these wars and bloodshed,
the noticeable fact that none of them
began so long as he continued living.
The controversy did not get to fighting
so long as he was there. To me it is
proof of his greatness in all senses, this
fact. How seldom do we find a man
that has stirred up some vast commo-
tion, who does not himself perish, swept
away in it ! Such is the usual course
of revolutionists. Luther continued, in
» good degree, sovereign of this greatest
revolution; all Protestants, of what
rank or function soever, looking much
to him for guidance: and he held it
peaceable, continued firm at the centre

hy Thomas Carh/le. 209

of it. A man to do this must have a
kingly faculty: he must have the gift
to discern at all turns where the true
heart of the matter lies, and to plant
himself courageously on that, as a
strong true man, that other true men
may rally round him there. He will
not continue leader of men otherwise.
Luther's clear deep force of judgment,
bis force of all sorts, of silence, of toler-
ance and moderation, among others,
are very notable in these circumstances.
Tolerance, I say ; a very genuine kind
of tolerance : he distinguishes what is
essential and what is not ; the unessen-
tial may go very much as it will. A
complaint comes to him that such and
such a Reformed Preacher "will not
preach without a cassock." Well, an
ewers Luther, what harm will a cassock
do the man ? " Let him have a cassock
to preach in ; let him have three cas-
socks if he find benefit in them !" His
18*

210 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

conduct in the matter of Carlstadt'f
wild image-breaking; of the Anabap-
tists; of the Peasants' War, shows a
noble strength, very different from spas-
modic violence. With sure prompt in-
sight he discriminates what is what : a
strong just man, he speaks forth what
is the wise course, and all men follow
him in that. Luther's Written Works
give similar testimony of him. The dia-
lect of these speculations is now grown
obsolete for us ; but one still reads them
with a singular attraction. And in-
deed the mere grammatical diction is
still legible enough ; Luther's merit in
literary history is of the greatest : his
dialect became the language of all writ
ing. They are not well written, these
Four-and-twenty Quartos of his ; written
hastily, with quite other than literary
objects. But in no Books have I found
more robust, genuine, I will say no*
ole faculty of a man than in these. A

by Thomas Carlyle. 211

rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity;
a rugged sterling sense and strength.
He flashes out illumination from him ;
his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to
cleave into the very secret of the mat-
ter. Good humor too, nay tender affec-
tion, nobleness, and depth: this man
could have been a Poet too ! He had
to work an Epic Poem, not write one.
I call him a great Thinker ; as indeed
his greatness of heart already betokens
that.

Eichter says of Luther's words, " his
words are half battles." They may be
called so. The essential quality of him
was, that he could fight and conquer ;
that he was a right piece of human
Valor. ~No more valiant man, no mor-
tal heart to be called braver, that one
has record of, ever lived in that Teu-
tonic Kindred, whose character is ^alor.
His defiance of the "Devils " in Worms
#as not a mere boast, as the like might

212 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

be if now spoken. It was a faith of
Luther's that there were Devils, spirit-
ual denizens of the Pit, continually be-
setting men. Many times, in his writ-
ings, this turns up ; and a most small
Bneer has been grounded on it by some.
In the room of the Wartburg where he
sat translating the Bible, they still show
you a black spot on the wall ; the strange
memorial of one of these conflicts. Lu-
ther sat translating one of the Psalms ;
he was worn down with long labor,
with sickness, abstinence from food:
there rose before him some hideous in-
definable Image, which he took for the
Evil One, to forbid his work : Luther
started up, with fiend-defiance ; flung
his inkstand at the spectre, and it dis-
appeared ! The spot still remains there;
a curious monument of several things.
Any apothecary's apprentice can now
tell us what we are to think of this ap-
parition, in a scientific sense : but th«

by Thomas Carlyle. 213

man's heart that dare rise defiant, face
to face, against Hell itself, can give no
higher proof of fearlessness. The thing
he will quail before, exists not on this
Earth or under it. — Fearless enough!
H The Devil is aware," writes he on one
occasion, " that this does not proceed
out of fear in me. I have seen and de-
fied innumerable Devils. Duke George,"
of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, " Duke
George is not equal to one Devil," — far
short of a Devil ! " If I had business
at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig,
though it rained Duke Georges for nine
days running." What a reservoir of
Dukes to ride into !

At the same time, they err greatly
who imagine that this man's courage
was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient
obstinacy and savagery, as many do.
Far from that. There may be an ab-
sence of fear which arises from the ab-
ience of thought or affection, from the

214 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

presence of hatred and stupid fury.
We do not value the courage of the
tiger highly ! With Luther it was far
otherwise ; no accusation could be more
unjust than this of mere ferocious vio-
lence brought against him. A most
gentle heart withal, full of pity and
love, as indeed the truly valiant heart
ever is. The tiger before a stronger foe
— flies : the tiger is not what we call
valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know
few things more touching than those
soft breathings of affection, soft as a
child's or a mother's, in this great wild
heart of Luther. So honest, unadul-
terated with any cant ; homely, rude in
their utterance ; pure as water welling
from the rock. What, in fact, was all
that downpressed mood of despair and
reprobation, which we saw in his youth
but the outcome of preeminent thought-
ful gentleness, affections too keen and
line? It is the course such men as

by Tho?/ias Ca/rlyle. 215

Ihe poor Poet Cowper fall into. Lu-
ther to a slight observer, might have
seemed a timid, weak man ; modesty,
affectionate shrinking tenderness the
chief distinction of him. It is a noble
valor which is roused in a heart like
this, once stirred up into defiance, all
kindled into a heavenly blaze.

In Luther's Table-Talk^ a posthumous
Book of anecdotes and sayings collected
by his friends, the most interesting now
of all the Books proceeding from him,
we have many beautiful unconscious
displays of the man, and what sort of
nature he had. His behavior at the
deathbed of his little Daughter, so still,
so great and loving, is among the most
affecting things. He is resigned that
his little Magdalene should die, yet
longs inexpressibly that she might live ;
—follows in awe-struck thought, the
flight of her little soul through those
unknown realms. Awestruck; most

216 Spiritual Portrait of Luther,

heartfelt, we can see ; and sincere, — foi
after all dogmatic creeds and articles,
he feels what nothing it is that we know,
or can know : His little Magdalene shall
be with God, as God wills ; for Luther
too that is all ; Islam is all.

Once, he looks out from his solitary
Patmos, the Castle of Coburg, in the
middle of the night : The great vault of
Immensity, long nights of clouds sailing
through it, — dumb, gaunt, huge : — who
supports all that ? " None ever saw the
pillars of it ; yet it is supported." God
supports it. We must know that God
is great, that God is good ; and trust,
where we cannot see. — Returning home
from Leipzig once, he is struck by the
beauty of the harvest-fields: How it
stands, that golden yellow corn, on its
fair taper stem, its golden head bent,
all rich and waving there, — the meek
Earth, at God's kind bidding, has pro»
duced it once again ; the bread of man '

by Thomas Cariyle. 217

In the garden at Wittenberg one even-
ing at sunset, a little bird has perched
for the night : That little bird, says Lu-
ther, above it are the stars and deep
Heaven of worlds ; yet it has folded its
little wings; gone trustfully to rest
there as in its home : the Maker of it
has given it too a home ! — Neither are
mirthful turns wanting : there is a great
free human heart in this man. The
common speech of him has a rugged
nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genu-
ine ; gleams here and there with beau-
tiful poetic tints. One feels him to be
a great brother man. His love of Music,
indeed, is not this, as it were, the sum-
mary of all these affections in him?
Many a wild unutterability he spoke
forth from him in the tones of his flute.
The Devils fled from his flute, he says.
Death-defiance on the one hand, and
mich love of music on the other ; I could
eall these the two opposite poles of a

19

218 Spiritual Portrait of Jsuther,

great soul ; between these two all great
things had room.

Luther's face is* to me expressive of
him ; in Kranach's best portraits I find
the true Luther. A rude, plebeian face;
with its huge crag-like brows and bones,
the emblem of rugged energy; at first,
almost a repulsive face. Yet in the
eyes especially there is a wild silent
sorrow ; an unnamable melancholy, the
element of all gentle and fine affections ;
giving to the rest the true stamp of no-
bleness. Laughter was in this Luther,
as we said ; but tears also were there.
Tears also were appointed him ; tears
and hard toil. The basis of his life was
Sadness, Earnestness. In his latter days,
after all triumphs and victories, he ex-
presses himself heartily weary of living;
he considers that God alone can and
will regulate the course things are tak-
ing, and that perhaps the Day of Judg
ment is not far. As for him, he longa

hy Thomas Carlyle. 21$

for one thing : that God would release
him from his labor, and let him depart
and be at rest. They understand little
of the man who cite this in ^'scredit of
him! — I will call this Luther a true
Great Man ; great in intellect, in cour-
age, affection and integrity ; one of our
most lovable and precious men. Great,
not as a hewn obelisk ; but as an Alpine
mountain, — so simple, honest, sponta-
neous, not setting up to be great at all ;
there for quite another purpose than
being great! Ah yes, unsubduable
granite, piercing far and wide into the
Heavens ; yet in the clefts of it foun-
tains, green beautiful valleys with flow-
ers ! A right Spiritual Hero and Pro-
phet ; once more, a true Son of Nature
And Fact, for whom these centuries,
and many that are to come yet, will be
thankful to Heaven.

APPENDIX.

REVERSE-SIDE OF THE PICTURE

By SIR WM. HAMILTON.*

The following hasty anthology ol
some of Luther's opinions, and, in his
own words, literally translated, may
render it doubtful, whether the heresies
of his followers are to be traced no
higher than to the relaxation, (not a
century old,) of religious tests. We
must not, however, set down Luther
for a rationalist, howbeit the rational-
ists may adduce Luther's practice as
the precedent of their own. For, while
far from erring through any overween

1 Discussions on Philosophy and Literature.
Education and University Reform, second Loi>
don edition, p. 505, et sequent.
19*

Appendix,

ing reliance on the powers of human
reason in general,, still Luther was be*
trayed into corresponding extravagan-
cies by an assurance of his personal in-
spiration, of which he was, indeed, no
[ess confident than of his ability to per-
form miracles. He disclaimed the Pope,
he spurned the Church, but varying in
almost all else, he never doubted of his
own infallibility. He thus piously
regarded himself as the authoritative
judge, both of the meaning, and of the
authenticity of Scripture. Yet though
it is our duty, in refuting an untenable
hypothesis, to allege various untenable
and even obnoxious opinions of the
great reformer ; so far from entertain-
ing any dislike of Luther, we admire
him, with all his aberrations, (for he
never paltered with the truth,) not only
as ore of the ablest, but as one of the
best of men. Only, in renouncing,
with Luther, the Pope, we are cer-

Appendix. 223

tainly not willing to make a Pope of
Luther.2

8 In stating the troth regarding Luther, I
should regret to be thought by any, to utter
aught in disparagement of Protestantism. Pro-
testantism is not the doctrine of this or that
individual Protestant ; and with reference even
to the man Luther, I am sorry that it is here
incumbent on me, to notice his faults without
dwelling on his virtues. That what is now to
be alleged, should not long ago have been famil-
iar to all, only shows that Church History has
not yet been written, as alone written it ought to
be, — with truth and knowledge. Church History
falsely written, is a school of vain glory, hatred,
and uncharitableness ; truly written, it is a dis-
cipline of humility, of charity, of mutual love.
Written in a veracious and unsectarian spirit,
every religious community is herein taught, thai
it has cause enough to blush for its adherents,
" Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra ;"

gad that others, though none be perfect, are all
•ntitled to respect, as all reflections, though
partial reflections, of the truth. Ecclesiastical
History, indeed, may and ought to be the on*

224 Appendix.

L Speculative Theology. — " God
pleaseth you when he crowns the un-
worthy ; he ought not to displease you
when he damns the innocent." [Jena
Latin, iii. f. 207.]— "All things take
place by the eternal and invariable will
of God, who [which] blasts and shat-
ters in pieces the freedom of the human
will." [F. 165.]—" God creates in us
the evil, in like manner as the good.
[Ff. 170, 216.]— "The high perfection
of faith,8 is to believe that God is just,

best, as the one unexclusive, application of reli-
gious principle to practice, — at once Oatholio
and Protestant and Christian; vindicating to
the Church at large its inheritance of authority;
manifesting the fallibility of all human agents,
nor substituting merely one papacy for another;
whilst yielding " Christ the truth," as its last
and dominant result.

* Assurance, Personal Assurance, Special
Faith, {the feeling of certainty that God is pro-
oitious to me, — that my sins are forgiven, Fidu.
wa, Plerophoria Fidei, Fides Specialis,) — A»

Appendix. 225

notwithstanding that, by his will he

entrance was long universally held in the Pro-
testant communities to be the criterion and
condition of a true or saving Faith. Luther
declares, that, " he who hath not Assurance
spews Faith out;" and Melancthon, that "As-
surance is the discriminating line of Christianity
from Heathenism." Assurance is, indeed, the
punctum saliens of Luther's system ; and an un-
acquaintance with this, his great central doo-
trine, is one prime cause of the chronic misre-
presentation which runs through our recent
histories of Luther and the Reformation. As-
surance is no less strenuously maintained by
Calvin ; is held even by Arminius ; and stands,
essentially, part and parcel of all the Confessions
of all the Churches of the Reformation, down
to the "Westminster Assembly. In that Synod
Assurance was, in Protestantism, for the first,
indeed only, time formally declared " not to oe
of the essence of Faith ;" and accordingly, the
Scottish General Assembly has, subsequently,
once and again, condemned and deposed the
holders of this, the doctrine of Luther, of Cal-
vin, of ali the other Churches of the Reforma-
tion, and of the older Scottish Church itseli

226 A pj) enaix.

renders us necessarily damnable, and

In the English, and, more articulately, in the
Irish Establishment, Assurance still stands a
necessary tenet of ecclesiastical belief. (See
Homilies, Book I., Number iii., Part 3, specialty
referred to in the Eleventh of the Thirty-niru
Articles, and Number iv., Parts 1 and 3 ; like-
vise the Sixth Lambeth Article.) Assurance
iras consequently held by all the older Anglican
Churchmen, of whom Hooker may stand for
the example : but Assurance is now openly dis-
avowed, without scruple, by Anglican Church-
men high and low, when apprehended ; but o*
these, many, like Mr. Hare, are blissfully incog-
nisant of the opinion, its import, its history,
and even its name.

This dogma, with its fortune, past and pre-
sent, affords indeed a series of the most curious
contrasts. — For it is curious, that this cardinal
point of Luther's doctrine should, without ex-
ception, have been constituted into the funda-
mental principle of all the Churches of the Re-
formation, and as their common and uncatholio
doctrine, have been explicitly condemned at
Trent. — Again, it is curious, that this common
and differential doctrine of the Churches of the

App endix. 227

aeemeth to find pleasure in the torments

Reformation, should now be abandoned virtu-
ally in, or formally by, all these Churches
themselves. — Again, it is curious, that Protest-
tuts should now generally profess the countei
Joctrine, asserted at Trent in condemnation oj
their peculiar principle. — Again, it is curioue
that this most important variation in the faith
of Protestants, as, in fact, a gravitation of Pro-
testantism back towards Catholicity, should
have been overlooked, as indeed in his days
undeveloped, by the keen-eyed author of " The
History of the Variations of the Protestant
Churches." — Finally, it is curious, that, though
now fully developed, this central approximation
of Protestantism to Catholicity should not, as
far as I know, have been signalized by any
theologian, Protestant or Catholic; whilst the
Protestant symbol, (Fides sola justificat — Faith
alone justifies,) though now eviscerated of its
eal import, and now only manifesting an unim-
portant difference of expression, is still supposed
to mark the discrimination of the two religious
denominations. For both agree, that the three
tieavenly virtues must all concur to salvation ;
tnd they only differ, whether Faith, as a word,

228 Appendix.

of the miserable." [F. 171.) All from
the treatise De Servo Arbitrio.]
II.) Practical Theology.4 — " We."

does or does not involve Hope and Charity.
This misprision would have been avoided had
Luther and Calvin only said — Fiducia sola jus-
tificat — Assurance alone justifies ; for on their
doctrine Assurance was convertible with true
Faith, and true Faith implied the other Chris-
tian graces. But this primary and peculiar
doctrine of the Reformation is now harmoni-
ously condemned by Catholics and Protestants
in unison.

* In a moral relation, perhaps, more than in
any other, the history of Luther and the Refor-
mation has been written, only as a coDventional
romance ; and I know not, whether Catholics
or Protestants have wandered the widest from
the line of truth. Of the following general
(acts I hold superfluous proof.

1°, After the religious revolution in Protestant
Germany, there began and long prevailed a
fearful dissolution of morals. The burthen of
Luther's lamentation is : " Under the Papacy,
ire were bad. but under the Gospel, we art
•even — yea more than seven times worse ;" — a

App end ix. 229

(Martin Luther Philippus, MvLmcthon

contrast vhich he usually signalises by the pa
rable of the " one unclean spirit returning and
taking with him seven other spirits, each more
wicked than himself."

2o, Of this moral corruption there were two
principal foci, — Wittemberg and Hesse. — Short-
ly before his death, Luther abandoning, calls
Wittemberg " a Sodom;" and not long after it,
Wittemberg is formally branded by Simon Mu-
saeus, the Professor of Theology and Superin-
tendent of Jena, another Protestant, another
German, another Saxon University, as " fcetida
cloaca Diaboli." — Touching Hesse, the celebrat-
ed Walther writing to Bullinger, before the
middle of the century, says of its centre of
learning and religious education : — "In Mar-
burg the rule of morals is such, as Bacchus
would prescribe to his Maenads, and Venus to
her Cupids ;" while from Marburg and the chief
ivhair of Theology in that Uuiversity, (what is
laknown to his biographers,) the immorality
of the natives had previously determined, as hf
writes, the pious Lambert of Avignon to fly
Ms flight being, however, arrested by his sud
ten death.

ao

230 A p p endix.

Martin Bucer^ Dionysius Melander^

8°, The cause of this demoralization is not to
be sought for in the religious revolution itself;
for in Switzerland and other countries the relig-
ious revolution resulted in an increased sobri-
ety and continence. In Protestant Germany,
and particularly in Saxony, we need look no
farther than to the moral doctrine of the
divines ;

" Hoc fonte derivata clades
In patriam populumque fluxit :"

but in Hesse, beside that influence, we must
take into account the pattern of manners set to
his subjects by the prince ;

" Regis ad exemplum totus componltur orblfl."

4°, As to Polygamy in particular, which not
only Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer, the three
leaders of the German Reformation, speculat-
ively adopted, — but to which above a dozen
distinguished divines among the Reformers
itood formally committed; there were two
orincipal causes which disinclined the theolo-
gians to a practical application of the theory. —
The first of these, which operated more espe-
cially on Luther and Melancthon, was the op.
position it was sure of encountering from th«

Appendtx. 231

John Zening, Antonius Cw,vmu8i

Princes of both branches of the house of Sax-
ony.— The second, that the doctrine itself was
taken np and carried out to every extreme by
odious sects and odious divines ; in a word, it
had become fly-blown. The Sacramentarian
Carlstadt's public adoption of it, tended princi-
pally to disgust Luther, and in a less degree
Melancthon ; for Carlstadt's doctrines were, in
the mass, an abomination to these two reform-
ers : but the polygamist excesses of the hated
Anabaptists, in the last season of their reign in
Munster, revolted all rational minds 5 and, as I
said, (what Mr. Hare strangely misunderstands,)
homoeopathically broke the force of the epi-
demic throughout Germany and Europe.

Specially : the Landgrave's bigamy has been
mistaken in its more essential circumstances,
from a want of the requisite information, both
by Protestant and Catholic writers; and by
none almost more than by the recent editor of
the Corpus Reformatorum, Dr. Bretschneider.
Touching this transaction, I shall now state in
general a few of the more necessary facts ; of
which, however startling, I have irrecusable
proof, —proof which, before long, I may rally

232 Appendix,

Adam Kraft, ofFulda, Justus Wmther,

detail, as indeed I ought ere this perhaps to
have done.

The sanction of Luther and Melanctbon to
the Landgrave's second marriage was com-
pelled. Prudentially, and for special reasons
which I shall not now enumerate, they were
strongly averse from this proceeding, on the
part of that Prince ; but on principle, they, un-
fortunately could not oppose it. They had
both promulgated opinions in favor of polygamy,
to the extent of vindicating to the spiritual
minister a right of private dispensation, and to
the temporal magistrate the right of establishing
the practice, if he chose, by public law. Thej
had even tendered (what is unknown, though
the consultation has been published for centu-
ries, to all English historians,) — tendered their
counsel to Henry VIII., advising him, in his
own case, to a plurality of wives. Without,
however, showing at present how the screw
was actually applied, I may notice generally
that their acquiescence was extorted, through
Martin Bucer, a reformer and man of geniui
»nly inferior to themselves ; whilst the proceed-
ing of the Landgrave was zealously encouraged,

Appe7idix. 233

Balthasar Raidajf — " we cannot advise

and the scruples of the second Landgravint
effectually overcome, by the two conrt preach-
ers, the two courtly chaplains, Dionysius Me-
lander and John Lening ; Melander and Lening
being also the Pastors of the two parishes where
lay the princely residences of Cassel and Mel-
8ingen, therefore were they, in all respects, the
appropriate spiritual advisers of their territorial
lord. Thus these three divines, apart from the
Prince, were the prime movers in this scandal-
ous affair ; and in contrast to them, Luther and
Melancthon certainly show in favorable relief.

Bucer (Butzer, Putzer, Felinus,) — " Cat by
name, and Oat by nature," the lesser Martin

5 The list of the divines who concurred in
the landgrave's bigamy is here given more fully
and accurately (though without the synonymes)
than in any other relative publication, — and ot
luch I am now acquainted, I believe, with all.
The consilium was drawn up by Luther and
Melancthon at "Wittemberg, 19th December,
1539. It was then signed by Bucer ; and after-
rards in Hesse, by the other six divines, wh«
▼ere all subjects of the Landgrave.

20*

234 Appendix.

that the license of marrying more wivei

had previously merited from Luther the charac-
ter of " lying varlet ;" and he consistently dis-
plays himself in the seqnel of this business as
guilty of Mendacity in every possible degree.
To those, however, acquainted with the real
htstcry of the Reformation, Bucer is known,
with much ability and many amiable qualities,
as, in fact, the &me damnee* of that revolution.
But he was not, at least, a simultaneous polyga-
mist, as asserted by some Catholic historians.

Dionysius Melander (Schwartze) did not belie
either his name or his surname. Though an
eloquent preacher, and "the Reformer of Frank-
fort," yet was he as worthy a minister of Bac-
chus, as an unworthy minister of Christ ; pro-
fessing as he did, " that he lived and wished to
live only for the taste of wine." Neither shall
we marvel how a Protestant Bishop, Superin-
tendent, Inspector, like Melander, could bestow
the spiritual benediction on his master's bigamy;
when aware of the still higher marvel, that
Melander the Inspector, Superintendent, Pro-
testant Metropolitan of Hesse, was (the moral
negro!) at and before the time, himself a fni-
tAMiST, that is, to avoid all possible ambiguity

Appendix. 235

than one be publicly introduced, and,

khe husband of three wives at once. The Prince
thus followed at a distance, not only the pre-
cept, but the example of the Pastor.

John, or, as the reverend divine was very
irreverently called, Leno Lenning, seems, with
both learning and ability, to have been a Pan-
darus and Caliban in one ; so that the epithets
of " monster," &c, applied to him by Luther
and Melancthon, suited indifferently his defor-
mities moral and physical. The Pastor of Mel-
singen was, as Melancthon informs us, like his
Prince, a syphilitic saint, (nor touching either
Prince or Pastor, do I found on any testimony,
hitherto adduced, on any testimony, euphemis-
tic or ambiguous) ; and this worthy undertook
the congenial task of converting Margaret von
der Sahl to the new faith of Polygamy. The
precious book, indeed, which, for the purpose
he composed and sanctimoniously addressed to
that "virtuous Lady and beloved sister in
Christ," is still extant. If an adulterer, Lenning
does not appear, like his fellow-laborer Melan-
der, to have been, in practice at least, a simul-
taneous polygamist; but when left a veteran

Appendix,

as it were ratified by law." (Such leg
tslation, in fact, no dependent Prince
— no feudatory of the Empire was war-
ranted to authorize.) " If anything
were allowed to get into print on this
head, your Highness," (Philip, Land-
grave of Hesse, champion of the Refor-
mation, who, having lost, as he pleads,
conceit of his wife, being touched with
scruples of conscience at his adultery,
but which he [thrice] admits that " he
does not wish to abstain from" and
" knowing," as he tells themselves, " of
Luther and Melancthon having exhort'
ed the King of England not to divorce

sian monster " incontinently married a nursery
girl, Barbara Biedenkap, as I recollect by name,
from tbe household of his pervert, "the left
Landgravine," and keeper of her eighth child.

With such precept and such example, w«
ghall not be surprised, that the Hessian morali
tecame soon notoriously the most corrupt in
Germany, I ought, perhaps, to say, in Christen
iom.

Appendix. 237

his first queen, but to marry a second
over and above," — had applied to the
leading doctors of the Kefortnation for
their spiritual sanction to take anothei
wife,) — " your Highness easily compre
hends that it would be understood and
received as a precept, whence much
scandal and many difficulties would

arise Your Highness should bo

pleased to consider the excessive scan-
dal; that the enemies of the Gospel
would exclaim, that we, like the Ana-
baptists, have adopted the practice of
polygamy, that the Evangelicals, as the
Turks, allow themselves the indulgence
of a plurality of wives. . . . But in cer-
tain cases there is room for Dispenses
Hon. If any one (for example) detain-
ed captive in a foreign country, should
there take unto himself a second wife
for the good of his body and health . . .
in these cases, we know not by what
•eason a man could be condemned, who

Appendix,

marries an additional wife, with th«
advice of his Pastor, not for the purpose
of introducing a new law, but of satis-
fying his own necessity. ... In fine, ii
your Highness be fully and finally re-
solved to marry yet another wife ; we
judge, that this ought to be done se-
creUy, as has been said above, in speak-
ing of the Dispensation, so that it be
known only to your Highness, to the
Lady, and to a few faithful persons
obliged to silence, under the seal of con-
fession ; hence no attacks or scandal oi
any moment would ensue. For there
is nothing unusual in princes keeping
concubines; and although the lower
orders may not perceive the excuses of
the thing, the more intelligent know
Uow to make allowance"6

• The nuptials were performed in presence
of these witnesses, — Melancthon, Bucer, Melon*
der [who officiated, Raida, who acted as Nota*
ryt] with others; and privately, in order, as th«

Appendix,

DX) Biblical Criticism. — (i.) "The

marriage-contract bears, " to avoid scandal, see-
ing that, in modern times, it has been unusual
to have two wives at once, although in this case
it he Christian and lawful." — The Landgrave
marvelously contrived to live in harmony with
both his wives, and had a large family by each.
The date of the transaction is the end of 1539.
The relative documents were published in 1679,
by the Elector Palatine, Charles Lewis, and are
said to have converted, among others, a de-
scendant of Philip Prince Ernest of Hesse, to
the Catholic Church. It has, in fact, been
stated by (now recovered) historians, that the
doctrine of Luther touching marriage, and the
practice of the Landgrave, were the obstacles
which prevented the Emperor Ferdinand I.
from declaring for the Reformation ; and some
distinguished converts have openly ascribed
their desertion of Protestantism to the same
cause. A corresponding opinion of Dr. Henke,
ate Primarius Professor of Theology in Helm-
rtadt, would have figured, had he known it.
with admirable effect, in Mr. Pearson's cata-
logue of modern Teutonic heresies. " Monog-
amy, " (says that celebrated divine,) " and the

240 Appendix

books of the Kings are more worthy of

prohibition of extra matrimonial connections,
are to be viewed as the remnants of monachism
and of an uninquiring faith." However detest-
able this doctrine, the bold avowal of the ra-
tionalist is honorable, when contrasted with
the skulking compromise of all protessed prin-
ciple, by men calling themselves — " The Evan-
gelicals."— Renouncing the Pope, they arrogate
the power of the keys to an extent never pre-
tended to by any successor of St. Peter ; and
proclaiming themselves to the world for the
Apostles of a purified faith, they can secretly,
trembling only at discovery, authorize, in name
of the Gospel, a dispensation of the moral law.
Compared with Luther [?] or Cranmer, how
respectable is the character of Knox.

Before 1843, I had become aware, that this
last statement was incorrect ; and in a supple-
mental note to a pamphlet published by me in
that year, I made the following retractation : —
44 1 do not found my statement of the general
opinion of Luther and Melancthon in favor oi
polygamy, on their special allowance of a second
wife to Philip the Magnanimous, or on any ex-
pressions contained in their Consilium on that

Appendix. 241

credit than the Books of the Chronicles."

occasion. On the contrary, that Consilium,
and the circumstances under which it was given,
may be, indeed always Tiave been, adduced to
show, that in the case of the Landgrave they
made a sacrifice of eternal principle to tempo-
rary expedience. The reverse of this I am able
to prove, in a chronological series of testimonies
by them to the religious legality of polygamy,
as a general institution, consecutively down-
wards from their earliest commentaries on the
Scriptures, [not as Mr. Hare perverts it (p. 840)
" their commentaries on the earliest books of
Scripture,"] and other purely abstract treatises.
So far, therefore, was there from being any dis-
graceful compromise of principle in the sanction
accorded by them to the bigamy of the Land-
grave of Hesse, they only, in that case, carried
their speculative doctrine (held, by the way,
also by Milton,) into practice; although the
prudence they had by that time acquired, ren-
dered them, on worldly grounds, averse from
their sanction being made publicly known. I
am the more anxious to correct this general
Inistake touching the motives of these illustrioui
taen, because I was myself, on a former oeca-
21

242 Appendix

[Colloqtria, c. lix. § 6.] — (ii.) "The book
Df Esther, I toss into the Elbe."7 [lb.]—

sion, led to join in the injustice." — (Be not
Schismatics, &c, p. 59, 8d. ed.)

1 Soon after the publication of this article, I
became aware, that Esther was here a mistake
for Esdras; and this by the verse quoted. The
error stands in all Aurifaber's editions of the
Table Talk ; his text is taken by Walch, and
from Walch I translated. It is corrected, how-
ever, in the recensions by Stangwald and Sel-
neocer, and, of course, in the new edition of the

Oolloquia by Bindseil As to my error ; I

may say in excuse, if excuse be needed, that at
the time of writing the article, not only was I
compelled to make the extracts without any
leisure for deliberation; but I recollected,
though the book was not at hand, that Luther,
in his work on the Bondage of the Will, had
declared that Esther ought to be extruded from
the canon, — a judgment familiar to every tyro
even in biblical criticism. His concluding wordi
are : — M dignior omnibus, me judice, qui extra
Comonem Iwiheret/wr" (Jena Latin, iii. 182.)
Esther, I thus knew, was repudiated by Luther,
and among nis formulas of dismissal the preced

Apjpendix. 243

[u And when the Doctor was correcting
the second book of the Maccabees, he
said: — ] I am so an enemy to the book
of Esther, that I would it did not exist ;
for it Judaises too much, and hath in
it a great deal of heathenish naughti-
ness. [Then said Magister Foerster,"
(the great Hebrew Professor:) — "The
Jews rate the book of Esther at more
than any of the prophets ; the prophets
Daniel and Isaiah they absolutely con-
temn. Whereupon Dr. Martinus : — It
is horrible that they, the Jews, should
despise the noblest predictions of these
two holy prophets; the one of whom
teaches and preaches Christ in all rich-
ness and purity, whilst the other por-
trays and describes, in the most certain
manner, monarchies and empires along
with the kingdom of Christ." — (iii.)
" Job spake not, therefore, as it stands

ing recommended itself as at once the moM
eharacteristic and the shortest.

244 Appendix.

writteD in his book, but hath had such
cogitations. ... It is a sheer argumen*
turn fabulae. ... It is probable that Sol-
omon made and wrote this book." [lb.]
— (iv.) " So also have the Proverbs
of Solomon been collected by others,
[caught up from the king's mouth,
when he spake them at table or else-
where: and those are well marked,
wherein the royal majesty and wisdom
shine conspicuous."8 (lb.)] — (v.) "This
book (Ecclesiastes) ought to have been
more full ; there is too much of broken
matter in it ; it has neither boots nor
spurs, but rides only in socks, as I myself

8 This is illustrated by what Luther says in
the Standing Preface on the Preacher of Solo-
mon, which dates from 1524. "This bool^
also, of the Proverbs of Solomon, has been pieced
together by others ; and among his, have been
Inserted the doctrine and sayings of sundry
wise men. — Item, the Song of Solomon appears,
m like manner, as a pieced book, taken bj
others out of Solomon's mouth."

Appendix. 245

when in the cloister. . . . Solomon hath
not therefore written this book, which
hath been made in the days of the Mac-
cabees by the Son of Sirach. It is like
a Talmud compiled from many books
perhaps in Egypt, from the Library
of King Ptolemy Energetes."9 [lb.] —
(vi.) " Isaiah hath borrowed his whole
art and knowledge from David ont of
the Psalter."10 [lb. c. Ix. § 10.]— (vii)

9 I now doubt not that Luther used the word
Ecclesiasticus, which the reporter heard as Ec-
clesiastes, appending afterwards the translation
of The Preacher ; for the quotation is from the
Table-Talk. I think no one will dispute this
who compares, inter alia, Luther's "Preface
to the Book of Jesus Sirach," to be found, as
all the others, in Walch's edition of his works,
(xiv. 91.) The mistake has also, I see, escaped
Dr. Bindseil, in his conclusion of Fcerstemann's
(ate elaborate, though by no means adequate,
edition of the Oolloquia.

io Luther also (lb. § 23) says:— "Moses and
David are the two highest prophets. "What
Isaiah hath, that he takes out of David, and
21*

246 Appendix

" The history of Jonah is so monstrous,
that it is absolutely incredible."11 [lb.]

the other propliets do in like manner." This I
presume to think inconsistent with a true doc-
trine of revelation. Inspiration borrowing ! —
Inspiration imitating I I did not however sup-
pose that, reprehensible as might be the ex-
pression, Luther denied the prophetic gift of
Isaiah.

11 1 quoted these words of Luther to show in
how irreverent a manner he thought himself
privileged to speak of the Holy Scriptures. . . .
Melancthon had fallen ill at Weimar from con-
trition and fear for the part he had been led to
take in the Landgrave's polygamy; his life was
even in danger. Luther came ; and Melancthon
is one of the three persons whom the Eeformer
afterwards boasts of having raised miraculously
from the dead. . . " Allda (saget Lutherus) muss-
te mir unser Herr Gott herhalten. Denn ich
warf ihm den sack fuer die Thuere, und rieb
Ihm die Ohren mit alien promissionibus exaudi-
endarum precum, die ich in der heilige Schrift
to. erzaehlen wusste, dass er mich musste erhce-
ren, wo ich anders seinen verheissungen trauen
•ollte." (May I indeed venture to translate

Appendix. 247

-(viii.) " That the Epistle to the He-
brews is not by Saint Paul ; nor indeed
by any apostle, is shown by chap. ii. 3.
... It is by an excellently learned man,

this?) "'Then and there,' said Luther, 'I
made our Lord God to smart for it. For I
threw him down the sack before the door, and
rubbed his ears with all his promises of hearing
prayer which I knew how to recapitulate from
Holy Writ, so that he could not but hearken to
me, should I ever again place any reliance on
his promises. "'.... Luther believed, that no-
thing could oe refused to his earnest supplica-
tion; and accordingly he declares, that it re-
quired only that he should sincerely ask for the
destruction of the world, to precipitate the ad-
vent of the last day. This doctrine was carried
to every its most absurd extreme by the other
reformers; and even the trigamist prelate of
Cassel, the wine-bibbing Melander, exhorted
Ms clergy to pray for a plentiful hop-harvest,
that, (as his son or grandson records,) though
himself abominating beer, there might thus be
a less demand for wine, and he, accordingly
allowed to indulge more cheaply in the juiot
of the grape.

248 Appendix.

a disciple of the Apostles. ... It should
be no stumbling-block, if there be found
in it a mixture of wood, straw, hay."
[Standing Preface in Luther's Yer
sion.] — (ix.) "The Epistle of James,
I account the writing of no apostle.'*
[Standing Preface.] " /St. James' s Epis-
tie is truly an Epistle of straw [in con-
trast to them," (" the right and noblest
books of the New Testament") " for it
hath in it no evangelical character."18

12 In various of his works, and from an early
to the latest period, Luther denied the canon-
icity of St. James's Epistle. To adduce only a
few of hs testimonies: — In 1519, in the sev-
enth Thesis against Eck, he declares it " wholly
inferior to the apostolic majesty ;" and in the
following year, in the Chapter on Sacraments,
of his Babylonish Captivity, " unworthy of an
apostolic spirit." In 1522, in a conclusion, after-
wards omitted, of the Standing Preface, he ex
eludes it "from the list of canonical hooks;" an
exclusion, however, contained in the Standing
Preface itself, in addition to the testimony quo.

Appendix. 249

(Fragmentary Preface to the ISTew Tes-
tament, 1524.)]-— (x.) " The Epistle of
Jude is an abstract or copy of St. Pe-
ter's second .... and allegeth sayings
and stories which have no place in
Scripture." [Standing Preface, &c.]— -
(xi.) In the Revelation of John much
is wanting to let me deem it either
prophetic or apostolical. ... I can dis-
cover no trace that it is established by
the Holy Spirit." [Preface of 1522.]18

Tlavpa [lev, dA/la fiaXa Tuyeutg.

ted from it in the text. We find in the Church
Postills, which were frequently republished,
Luther asserting : — •' This Epistl« was written
by no Apostle ; no where indeed is it fully con-
formable to the true apostolic character «nd man-
ner, and to pure doctrine." (Walch, xii. 76fO —
Finally, it is rejected, as in doctrine contradic-
tory Df St. Paul, in the Table-Talk. (0. lxix. § *.)
18 I have not deemed it necessary to quote
anything in confirmation or supplement of tha
•xtracts from Luther, relative to the biblical
oooks, except when Mr. Fare has hazarded his
strictures. On more than hajfoi my example*

250 Appendix.

of Luther's temerarius criticism, he has been
silent. He has ventured no remark in regard
to the books of — (i.) Kings and Chronicles, (iii.)
Job, (v.) Ecclesiastes, (viii.) Epistle to the He-
brews, (x.) Epistle of Jude, (xi.) Apocalypse.
The half of these likewise, be it remarked, are
attacked by Luther, regularly and in writings
formally expounding his last and most matured
opinions. So that even if Mr. Hare had been
as successful, as he is unfortunate, in his coun-
ter-criticism,— were, in fact, all the extracts
expunged, in regard to which he has thought
it possible to make a single objection ; never-
theless my conclusion would still stand un-
touched,— that Luther, though personally no
rationalist, affords a warrant to the most auda-
cious of rationalistic assaults. For, as observed,
he could not vindicate this license of judgment
as a right peculiar to himself— as a right not
common to all. Accordingly, the ultra-ration-
alist Wegscheider dedicates his Institutiones
fheologiffl to the memory of Luther; and in
what terms ? " Piis Manibus Martini Lutheri ;

.... qui Rationi human© suum jus vin-

dicavit, quamque viam, in sacris ad Ohristi
prroceptas instaurandis, ipse prsaiverat, ea ul
pergerent posteros admonuit."

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